Forming first impressions Flashcards
Why do we form impressions?
- understand and predict behaviour
-make sense of sensory information in the world
-give world social meaning - (Fiske&Taylor, 1991; Gross, 2012)
What are the research studies demonstrating impressions give the world social meaning?
- Fiske&Taylor, 1991
What are impressions?
- perceptual and cognitive shortcuts - cognitive heuristic
-constructed representation of reality-schema
What are examples of cues for first impressions?
- impressions from behaviour
-physical appearance
-non verbal communication eg eye contact - impressions from familiarity (mere exposure effect can lead to positive feelings
What are the two mains we form first expressions?
- extract large amount of info about someone base on a small amount of behaviour
- we base our assessments of others on their physical appearance
One of the main first ways of forming first impressions, extract large amount of info about someone base on a small amount of behaviour, what does this entail? (with research studies)
-assessments of personality generally take around 30 seconds- Carney et al 2007
One of the main first ways of forming first impressions, we base our assessments of others on their physical appearance, what does this entail? (with research studies)
- accuracy in determining traits based on passport style photo include intelligence (Zebrowitz et al 2002) and psychoticism (Shelving et al 2003)
In forming impressions from physical appearance, what is the key research study?
- Dion et al 1972
What did Dion et al (1972) say in impressions from physical appearance?
- attractive people rated as having a more socially desirable personality, greater marital competence and higher occupational status
What does salient mean in capturing attention?
- attention-capturing stimuli
-context can make cues salient
What is meant by automatic interpretation of cues?
- cues have no meaning on their own- must be interpreted with stored knowledge of others
- use concepts associated with cues - traits associated with behaviour eg dishonesty associated with cheating on exam
What is the research study of Higgins, Rhodes and Jones 1977?
- 2 groups memorised words related to adventurous or reckless
- seemingly unrelated task, read about Donald and asked to describe him in their own words
- found priming influenced descriptions and positivity ratings
-if adventurous primed- described as daring/positive
-if reckless primed- described as foolish/negaive
In which cues capture attention, what is Asch’s configurable model (1946)?
- Ps saw list of trait words describing an imaginary person
- difference between list of participants were shown
- Central traits
List A- warm-positive impression
List B- cold- negative impression
-Peripheral traits
List C- polite- no difference in impressions formed
List D- blunt - no difference in impression formed - replicated but in real person (Kelly 1950s)- behaviour changed towards unknown lecturer if heard in advance if they were warm/cold
What is automatic interpretation of cues?
- accessibility from frequent activation (FAMILIARITY)
What are the key research studies in automatic interpretation of cues?
- Zajonc’s (1968) mere exposure effect
- Moreland and Beach (1992)
What is Zajonc’s (1968) study of mere exposure effect demonstrate?
- individuals grow to like people they more they see them, even if they have never interacted
What did Moreland and Beach (1992) research demonstrate?
- 4 women attend varying number of sessions in large college course
- women sat quietly- no interaction
-end of course, students viewed photos of the women and gave impressions of them - those seen as warm an intelligent - would like to meet
-didnt measure rate of attractiveness
In characterising behaving person, what is correspondent inferences referring to?
-Jones and Davis 1965 theory of correspondent inference explains how people infer that a persons behaviour corresponds to an underlying trait - often result of systematic processing
In characterising behaving person, who’s theory was correspondent inferences?
- jones and davis 1965
In terms of correspondent inferences, what are the three factors they depend on?
- was there free choice?
- was the behaviour normal or expected in the situation?
- did they intend the action to achieve something?
What does cognitive representation mean?
body of knowledge that an individual has stored in memory
What does association mean?
link between two or more cognitive representations
What does accessibility mean?
processing principle that the info that is more readily available generally has the most impact on thoughts and behaviours
What does priming mean?
activation of cognitive representation to increase its accessibility and thus likelihood it will be used
What does correspondent inference mean?
process of characterising someone as having a personality trait that corresponds to his or her observed behaviour
What does correspondence bias mean?
tendency to infer an actor’s personal characteristics from observed behaviours, even when the inference is unjustified because other possible causes of behaviour exist
What does superficial processing mean?
relying on accessible information to make inferences or judgements, which expending little effort in processing
