Emotion Priming and Reversing Initial Impressions
Krysta Demere & James Forbes, Angelo State University
Poster presented at the 2013 Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington D.C.
Emotional states affect social interactions and impression formation. Past research has
focused mainly on the influence of steady-state emotions within these two domains (e.g., Morris &
Keltner, 2000; Matheson, Holmes, & Kristiansen, 1991). However, social interactions are not
restricted to constant emotional states. Indeed, within social interactions, emotion states vary across
time and interactions (Filipowicz, Barsade, & Melwani, 2011). Varying emotional states can result in
revised expectations for cooperation and competition (Olekalns, Probst, Smith, & Carnevale, 2005).
According to the time lag model, emotional states arising from initial experiences dominate later
information processing and influence impressions. According to the response adaptation model,
people constantly monitor changes in others’ behavior leading to changes in the observer’s emotional
state as well as an initial impression.
The present study was designed to determine whether participants’ initial positive or negative
impressions of profiled individuals’ behavior changed when participants were given subsequent
contrasting positive or negative behavior information about the profiled individuals. Moreover, unlike
previous impression formation research, the present study also primed participants’ emotions prior to
the impression formation procedure to specifically examine how emotions influence the process of
revising initial emotional impressions. We expected that participants’ primed emotions, either negative
or positive, would influence initial and subsequent impressions (Haidt, 2001).
Procedures. Twelve participants were given an emotion priming task, consisting of 6 sentence
completion items, in 1 of 2 conditions: negative or positive. Next, they were shown 1 of 3 photographs
of a person with an emotionally neutral facial expression and asked to read a short vignette
describing the depicted person behaving positively or negatively. This procedure was repeated three
times in one of two priming and vignette valence sequences: negative, positive, positive or positive,
negative, negative. After reading each vignette, all participants were asked to rate their impressions
of the profiled individual using a 7 item impression scale.
Results. Participants’ impressions were analyzed using a 2 (Priming: positive v negative) x 2
(Vignette Sequence: negative, positive, positive vs. positive, negative, negative) x 6 (Impression:
kindly view, enthusiasm, appreciation, anger, annoyance, friendship assessment) mixed ANOVA with
repeated measures on impressions. The principal finding was a 3-way interaction involving Priming,
Vignette Sequence, and Impressions: F (2,18 ) = 31.93, p = 0001.
Discussion & Conclusions. When participants were primed to feel positive emotions, then read
a positive vignette depicting another’s positive behavior, participants’ initial positive and negative
impressions were reliably high and low, respectively. Similarly, when participants were primed to feel
negative emotions, then read a vignette depicting another’s negative behavior, participants’ initial
positive and negative impressions were reliably low and high, respectively. Crucially, when
participants read subsequent vignettes depicting behavior contrary to participants’ initial impressions,
their subsequent impressions were reliably influenced in the direction of the vignettes’ emotional
valence, supporting the response adaptation model of impression formation. This impression reversal
was especially pronounced when participants’ own emotions were first primed in the direction of the
behavioral vignettes’ emotion valence sequence. Thus, one’s initial emotion state influences the
process of impression formation.