Michael, an accountant, often wonders why people are surprised when they find out that he is also a skydiving instructor on the weekends. the most obvious explanation is that people form cognitive schemas for different types of people and occupations. the use of these types of assumptions is called:

An implicit personality theory

Explanation:

An implicit personality theory is based on how we associate certain people with certain personalities or characteristics. For example what cahracter do you associate with political leader ? A thin slender person ? All those associated characters we make towards certain people are based on this theory. We infer certain characteristics based on our perception.

For example we may see someone who is very bold and outspoken and associate them with intelligence and infer that they are intelligent.

We see someone who who smiles a lot and infer that they are friendly individual.

We also do the same thing with occupations we see someone who goes to the gym everyday we may tend to assume they are into sport and may be surprised if we find that if they are not at the gym they sit around and of nothing.

Michael as an accountant is likely to be associated with maths and numbers and always at the office formal guy so skydiving seems to be too wild for that kind of person.

experiments.

surveys.

questionnaires.

interviews.

case studies.

participant and non-participant observation.

observational trials.

studies using the delphi method.