Lecture Sessions on Impression Formation
(Person Perception)
1. Early research in impression formation: The
work of Solomon Asch. Eg. The role of trait
centrality (“warm-cold” dimension) and the
order of presentation of positive and negative
information)
2. What are the sources of information in
forming impressions of the characteristics, or
personality, of other people? Direct sources
and second-hand information.
3. Forming impressions based on direct
information – the observation of the behavior
of others.
(a) man pacing back and forth, and the café
scene.
(b) Impressions based on non-verbal
behavior – the role of expectations and
again, the fundamental attribution error.
4. Stereotypes and stereotyping as an indirect
source in impression formation.
5. More on stereotypes.
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
the question of consensus
how is this consensus developed?
evidence for stereotyping
evidence for attending to “individuating
information” about an individual, that is,
to information which is counter to the
stereotype.
(e) the question of the accuracy of
components of a stereotype.
6. Other indirect sources.
(a) expected co-occurrences between
attributes in people-in-general
(b) assumed similarity
(c) halo effect
7. Do we know the impressions we make on
others?
8. Do we know how we have just behaved?
Study by Gosling (1998).
9. The question of accuracy in person
perception.
Asch:
In one study, separate groups of participants
listen to one of two descriptions of an individual
in the form of trait-adjectives. They are then
asked to form overall impressions of the person
and to rate that person on a list of other trait
adjectives.
Study 1:
Intelligent, skillful, industrious, warm,
determined, practical cautious OR
Intelligent, skillful, industrious, cold,
determined, practical cautious
Study 2:
Intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical,
stubborn, envious OR
Envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive,
industrious, intelligent
Two Pretend Videotapes
1. Man pacing back and forth in agitated
manner.
Please rate him on the following:
feeling calm:__:__:__:__:__:__:__: feeling anxious
calm (person):__:__:__:__:__:__:__: anxious
(person)
Two Pretend Videotapes
2. Café Scene: Man is given too much
change when he pays his bill, leaves
and comes back in to return the
money.
Please rate him on the following:
dishonest:__:__:__:__:__:__:__: honest
Causal attributions regarding the behavior of
others or our own behaviour.
a) dispositional: the person behaved as she did
for dispositional, internal reasons, because
of her personality, attitudes, and other
attributes.
b) situational: the person behaved as she did
because of situational factors, the nature of
the situation (e.g., anxiety arousing), whom
she was with and their expectations, etc.
Snyder (1976)
Led to Believe that the Topic
Of the Interview Is
Politics
Sex
State anxiety rating*
8.5
11.1
Trait anxiety rating*
46.2
58.4
* higher scores represent higher levels of state or trait
anxiety
Stereotypes and Stereotyping
Stereotypes refer to the expectations we have
about the attributes of a category of people-ingeneral.
To stereotype is to incorporate your expectations
about the attributes of a category of people-ingeneral into your judgements about a specific
member of that category.
Gardner and Taylor
Research participants listened to one of three
audio-tapes of a man being interviewed
(randomly assigned).
Interviews (in English) were scripted by the
researchers such that in:
Tape 1: French-Canadian, information
consistent with the stereotype.
Tape 2: French-Canadian, information
irrelevant to the stereotype.
Tape 3: French-Canadian, information
opposite to the stereotype.
After listening to one of the tapes, subjects made
judgements of the person being interviewed on
the same rating scale that you used to rate
French-Canadians-in-general. Based on certain
ratings, a stereotype score was calculated (this
was the dependent variable).
Gardner and Taylor
7 _____________________ tape 1
6
5
Stereotype 4 _____________________ tape 2
score
3
2
1 _____________________ tape 3
___________________________
Tape 1
Tape 2
Tape 3
Native Canadians-in-general
Poor: __: X :__:__:__:__:__: Wealthy
Educated: __:__:__:__:__:_X_:__: Uneducated
Physically: __:__:__:__:__:_X_:__: Physically
Clean
Dirty
Ethnocentrism
To make an ethnocentric judgement is to
evaluate the beliefs, values and behaviour of
another group of people using the beliefs, values
and behaviour of your own group as the standard
for that which is morally correct and essentially
human.
We can also expand our impression of others by
incorporating our expectations about how
attributes go together in people-in-general into
our judgements of a specific individual.
In addition, our impressions of others can be
expanded through indirect processes of
assumed similarity
halo effect
Second-Hand Information (Gilovich, 1987)
a) Recipient of first-hand information
watched one of a number of videotapes
developed by the researcher in which
individuals talked about an event in their
lives that they were not particularly
proud of (e.g., the time I drowned my
brother’s fish).
i)
ii)
iii)
after listening to the videotape, this
recipient retold the story and the
retelling was also taped.
This recipient then made trait
adjective judgements of the person
who originally told the story.
This recipient made a judgement
regarding the extent to which the
behaviour under question (e.g.
drowning of the fish) was due to
dispositional causes or to
situational causes.
b) Recipient of the second-hand
information listened to the tape made by
the first participant and then made the
same judgements as the first participant.
Kenny & DePaulo (1993)
Do People Know How Others View
Them?
1. People tend to think that they make a
similar impression on others (e.g.,
they think that others generally view
them as good-natured or smart or that
others like them about the same).
2. In terms of accuracy in the way that
we think that others view us,
generalized accuracy is fairly high,
that is, our perceptions of how others
in general view us is fairly high. So
that your belief that others in general
see you as good-natured and smart is
likely to be right.
3. On the other hand, because people’s
beliefs about how others see them
tend to be undifferentiated, people
seem to have less insight into how
they are uniquely viewed by others.
4. These distinctions are greater for trait
judgements than for liking
judgements.
Gosling (1998)
Business administration students in groups
of six.
Case study. Afterwards asked to indicate
how frequently they had exhibited certain
behaviours.
Discussion groups were videotaped and
behaviour was assessed.
Told joke to lighten tense moment - r=.72
Interrupted someone else - r=.07
Paunonen (1989)
Correspondence between judgements
about another person and that person’s
judgements about himself or herself
ranged from about r=.08 for strangers to
about r=.42 for close friends.
Swann (1997)
“Our findings suggest that the confidence
people have in their impressions of others is,
at best, inconsistently related to the accuracy
of those impressions.
Such confidence-accuracy discrepancies
seem to occur because people base the
confidence of their impression on cues that
are largely unrelated to accuracy.
For example, the richness of their
impressions -- meaning more information,
and more integrated or connected
information.
Accuracy of Personality Judgements
Moderators of Accuracy:
a)
good judges
b) good targets
c)
good traits (and behaviour)
Information about the Target Should Take Many
Forms:
a)
b)
c)
d)
self-rating on inventories
ratings by knowledgeable informants
direct observation of the person’s behaviour
reports of behaviour in daily life
Criteria for Assessing Accuracy:
a) use of interjudge agreement
b) predictions of behaviour