Is knowledge reliance in source guessing a cognitive trait? Examining stability across time and domain

Abstract

When people need to infer the source of information in the absence of memory, they may rely on general knowledge (e.g., stereotypes) to guess the source. Prior research documented task-related determinants and individual differences of stereotype reliance in source guessing, but little is known about the underling nature of this process. In two experiments, we tested whether a cognitive trait could account for the knowledge reliance in source guessing. Participants performed two distinct study–test cycles of a classical source-monitoring paradigm in which two person sources present stereotypical information that in a later test phase had to be attributed to its origin. In Experiment 1, both tasks used item material from the same knowledge domain (age stereotypes) and were either separated by 10 minutes or 7 days. In Experiment 2, we used item material from two different knowledge domains (Task 1: age stereotypes; Task 2: gender stereotypes). Although cross-task correlations of source-guessing parameters from Bayesian-hierarchical multinomial processing tree model analyses showed only weak positive correlations, absolute source guessing remained fairly stable within individuals across time (Experiment 1) and knowledge domains (Experiment 2). Considering statistical challenges of the assessment of relative stability via correlations, we suggest based on the stricter absolute stability criterion that source guessing rather encompasses trait-like features. We discuss implications regarding the generalizability and nature of source guessing in comparison to other cognitive processes involved in source attribution, which were highly stable in both experiments.