Impression Formation Research Research Articles

How different types of environmentalists are perceived: changing perceptions by the feature.

Previous research found stereotypes of environmentalists as barriers to public engagement and identification with environmentalism. Yet, there is limited understanding of the distinct attributes of an environmentalist that influence public perceptions and self-identification. In our research, we address this knowledge gap by analyzing reactions to a range of fictional environmentalist profiles. We investigated how multiple features of these profiles (e.g., gender, occupation, type of pro-environmentalism) influenced stereotypes (such as competence, friendliness, and trustworthiness), perceived typicality, and participants' self-identification with the described profiles, using a novel conjoint experiment approach with 678 US residents. We found that profiles described as women, Asians, working as a cleaner or office clerk, and politically moderate or liberal, exhibiting private to moderate environmental behaviors and global environmental concerns, were generally perceived as more typical for environmentalists. Moreover, participants most identified with profiles depicted as women, in a cleaner occupation, and exhibiting private pro-environmental behaviors. Atypical profile descriptions, based on prior research, enhanced participants' impressions only when associated with private pro-environmental behaviors or the cleaner occupation. We introduce new avenues in impression formation research and the use of conjoint analyses in psychological research; moreover, we contribute valuable input to the environmental movement regarding message framing considering the source and content relative to the targeted audience.

Youths’ Facial Appearance Distinguishes Leaders From Followers in Group-Perpetrated Criminal Offenses and Is Associated With Sentencing Outcomes

Group-perpetrated crime often involves leaders and followers, but it is not currently understood how peer groups form around leaders during a criminal incident. Impression formation research has shown that specific facial cues are associated with leadership and perceptions of leadership. We extend this research to leadership among group-perpetrated youth crime and examine its role in downstream sentencing outcomes. Study 1 revealed that leaders of groups may be perceived as more dominant than their followers. In Study 2, participants were tasked with selecting the leaders from their groups and were more likely to (correctly) select targets perceived as more dominant but also (incorrectly) select targets perceived as more Trustworthy. In Study 3, we examined whether facial impressions were associated with downstream sentencing outcomes. Perceptions of Trustworthiness were associated with reduced sentencing, but dominance was unrelated. The results underscore the role that facial appearance plays in group formation and sentencing among youth.

Combining Traits Into a Face: A Reverse Correlation Approach

The integration of multiple traits into a unitary impression has been extensively investigated in impression formation research. However, because the focus has typically been on the verbal output of the formed impressions, little is known about how impressions resulting from different trait combinations impact perceivers’ expectations about facial content. Here, we offer initial evidence about how trait integration occurs in social face perception. In two studies, we used a reverse correlation paradigm to obtain face images reflecting participants’ expectations about facial content for different trait combinations of dominance and trustworthiness. Analyses of the physical and perceived content of these images suggest that: (a) trustworthiness information outweighs dominance information in expectations about facial content; and (b) the face content derived from any trait combination contains information that goes beyond the content associated with each separate trait. These findings extend the research on trait integration to social face perception.

Perceptions of Moral Violations and Personality Traits Among Heroes and Villains

This study investigates disposition-formation processes in entertainment by predicting perceptions of media heroes and villains by their behavior in specific moral domains. Participants rated self-selected heroes and villains from television and film along the moral domains of care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Haidt & Joseph, 2007) as well as along dimensions of warmth, competence, and duplicity used in impression-formation research (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). Results show that heroes violate moral norms in domains of authority and purity, whereas villains violated moral norms in the domains of caring and group loyalty. Furthermore, these moral violations are associated with personality dimensions of warmth and competence differently for each character type, such that impressions of heroes are driven by their work in the care domain (i.e., saving or protecting people), whereas for villains, violation of purity norms is most strongly associated with subsequent impression formation processes.

Seeking Social Connectedness: Interdependent Self-Construal and Impression Formation Using Photographic Cues of Social Connectedness

ABSTRACT Impression formation research has traditionally focused on either the characteristics of the target or of the participant, failing to examine their interplay. In the present study, we explored the role of interdependent self-construal on ratings of others who are portrayed as alone or connected. We hypothesized that participants with an interdependent view of the self would prefer others who are portrayed as socially connected, while the opposite would be true for participants low on interdependence. Results showed that college students high on interdependence rated a university professor photographed with another person relatively more positively than a professor photographed alone. This pattern was reversed for participants low on interdependence.

Attitude Transference

Attitude transference involves transferring an attitude expressed by one person onto other, neutral targets. This attitude transference phenomenon was investigated in five studies using variations of the attitude-attribution paradigm. Participants heard a target express either favorable or unfavorable attitudes on a topic and were subsequently asked to guess the attitudes of neutral targets in the context of a different experiment. Path analyses showed that exposure to favorable or unfavorable attitudes directly influenced attitude attributions, and that neither heightened consensus estimates nor priming of personal attitudes could completely account for the results. The implications of attitude transference for persuasion and impression formation research were discussed.

Automaticity of social behavior: direct effects of trait construct and stereotype-activation on action.

Previous research has shown that trait concepts and stereotype become active automatically in the presence of relevant behavior or stereotyped-group features. Through the use of the same priming procedures as in previous impression formation research, Experiment 1 showed that participants whose concept of rudeness was printed interrupted the experimenter more quickly and frequently than did participants primed with polite-related stimuli. In Experiment 2, participants for whom an elderly stereotype was primed walked more slowly down the hallway when leaving the experiment than did control participants, consistent with the content of that stereotype. In Experiment 3, participants for whom the African American stereotype was primed subliminally reacted with more hostility to a vexatious request of the experimenter. Implications of this automatic behavior priming effect for self-fulfilling prophecies are discussed, as is whether social behavior is necessarily mediated by conscious choice processes.

Reactive effects of concurrent verbalization in person perception tasks

AbstractThe reactive effects of concurrent verbalization (CV) on task performance in impression formation research have not been investigated, despite increasing use of this process tracing method. Since many person perception tasks involve multiple trials, assessment of reactivity should focus on carry‐over and reactive‐practice effects, as well as changes in task performance concurrent with thinking aloud. An experimental method for assessing these three forms of reactivity was demonstrated in an information‐request impression formation task. Concurrent reactive effects were found for both continuous and intermittent CV. For the former, task processing was mildly slowed but altered in a manner suggestive of more efficient learning of, and memory for cues requested early in task performance. The substantial slowing of task processing during trial 1 intermittent CV largely disappeared by trial 2, indicating that subjects may require more practice for this method to be used effectively. The results for continuous CV are in line with recent findings which are inconsistent with certain predictions from the predominant theory of verbal protocol generation (Ericsson and Simon, 1984). Investigators using CV are urged to incorporate empirical checks for reactivity into their experimental designs.

EFFECTS OF APPLICANT RACE, SEX, SUITABILITY, AND ANSWERS ON INTERVIEWER'S QUESTIONING STRATEGY AND RATINGS

Impression formation research (Snyder & Swann, 1978) suggests that people engage in information seeking strategies designed to confirm their impressions of others. In an extension of this work to the selection interview, Sackett (1982) found, however, that subjects did not consistently adopt a confirmatory information seeking strategy. This study is a further examination of Snyder and Swann's theory. In simulated interviews 170 subjects (1) read resumes of hypothetical applicants, (2) selected ten questions to ask each applicant, (3) received written responses to each question immediately on its selection, and (4) rated each applicant's suitability. An interaction accounting for 73% of variance indicated that applicant ratings were based primarily on the content of applicants' responses, but initial impressions also played a part. No clear‐cut, confirmatory information seeking strategy was observed.

Salience of Physical Appearance in Impression Formation

Descriptions of others often include an enumeration of their traits and it is char acteristic of people to form impressions of others based solely on these descrip tions. The present research assumed an analogy between these trait descriptions and various aspects of physical appearance which are known to generate such descriptions. Thus impression formation research on trait descriptions was used as a model to explain and predict impression formation research on physical appearance. In order to examine how judgments of an individual are affected by the physical appearance of the individual, subjects viewed and rated slides of drawings. The stimulus person depicted in the drawings was constant across all drawings while various aspects of physical appearance, such as clothing, were varied. The slides were developed from a factorial combination of four specific physical appearance cues. The design was a five‐way factorial having two levels (presence or absence) for each of the factors and repeated measures on each factor. In accord with the model, it was hypothesized that physical appearance cues which have an impact on impressions of sociability would be more influen tial (primarily salient) in evoking judgments of likableness than judgments of respect. It was also hypothesized that physical appearance cues which have an impact on impressions of intellectuality would be more influential (primarily sa lient) in evoking judgments of respect than judgments of likableness. Statistical analyses revealed some support for each of the hypotheses. For example, the presence or absence of the long skirt and red hair had an impact on first impres sions only when the particular cue was salient for the judgment elicited. Thus it was not the cue in and of itself which led to significant differences in first impres sions, but rather the fit between the cue and the judgment elicited. Ways to simplify the procedure are suggested in order to better address the hypotheses in future research.

Determining perceived meaning during impression formation: another look at the meaning change hypothesis.

The meaning change hypothesis says that the individual items of information from which an impression of someone is formed tend to be perceived in a way consistent with the overall impression. It is argued here that the evidence usually considered as the principal experimental support for this hypothesis is artifactual, the product of a spurious method of determining perceived meaning. We describe a new method in which, following a series of person descriptions, subjects try to recall from each description a critical trait with the aid of a roughly synonymous cue word that is evaluatively either consistent or inconsistent with the description as a whole. The meaning change hypothesis predicts a higher level of recall when the cue word and the overall description are evaluatively consistent. We show that although this prediction holds with at least one kind of person description (Experiments 1 and 2), it does not hold with the kind most often used in impression formation research (Experiments 3, 4, and 5).

Change of meaning processes in impression formation

Subjects formed an impression of an unknown other described by the traits intelligent, clean, efficient, level‐headed, punctual, neat, ambitious, and self‐disciplined. Even though each of these traits is positive in normative evaluation, an overall negative evaluation of the stimulus person resulted. However, when two traits highly discrepant from the descriptive meaning of these eight traits (easy‐going and sensitive) were substituted for the two highest evaluated traits, an overall positive evaluation resulted. These and related results provide convincing evidence for a change of meaning model in comparison to a weighted averaging model of impression formation. In a subsidiary investigation support for the weighted averaging position was shown to depend on the standard experimental procedure used in impression formation research in which subjects make judgments of a large number of trait sets.