in the cold condition, even though they witnessed the exact same lecture. Furthermore, the behavior of the students toward the lecturer depended on which descriptor was used: Participants in the warm condition were more likely to initiate interactions with him. Kelley’s research provided an important supplement to Asch’s, paving the way for subsequent, more fine-grained research on impression formation (Widmeyer & Loy, 1988).
Figure 5.1 How We Form Impressions
Source: Based on Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 41(3), 258–290.
Think Again!
1 What are the additive and configural models of impression formation?
2 How can initial impressions people form affect their subsequent behavior?
Forming First Impressions
How do we form first impressions? Person perception begins with the initial exposure to information about a target, such as observation of or contact with the person herself, second-hand exposure (e.g., a rumor, a third party, etc.), or some other source, such as the web. Let’s take the case of Emil’s first encounter with Sandra, a fellow college student enrolled in his psychology course. Emil notices Sandra, who is sitting three rows in front of him, on the first day of class. He immediately forms an overall impression of Sandra based on various aspects of her physical appearance (e.g., her skin tone, facial features, style of dress, age, etc.) and her behavior (raising her hand, talking to other students, checking text messages, etc.). Each characteristic facilitates Emil’s effortless categorization of Sandra along a number of dimensions, including what are called the “Big Three” characteristics: race/ethnicity, age, and sex (Fiske, 1998; Zarate & Smith, 1990). Emil will likely begin to interpret her behaviors by ascribing meaning and explanations to them, and relevant stereotypes may be activated and may guide these interpretations. During the course of the class period and subsequent encounters, he may modify his initial impressions of her, add or subtract categorizations, and develop an integrated, more individualized, nuanced, impression (Bos & Dijksterhuis, 2011; Fiske, Lin, & Neuberg, 1999). Research demonstrates that both the configural and the additive models are correct: People use both categorization or top-down processing and additive or bottom-up processing during impression formation (North & Fiske, 2012). In Chapter 10, we will elaborate on the role of stereotypes in person perception. For now we’ll turn our attention to other aspects of person perception: understanding emotional expressions, detecting lies, and determining the causes of social behavior.
Thin Slices
As mentioned above, people are remarkably skilled at forming impressions based on exposure to “thin slices” of a target person’s overall features, behaviors, and personality (Ambady, 2010; Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993). In a fascinating study, Todorov and his colleagues asked participants to rate photos of U.S. Senate candidates on attractiveness, likeability, trustworthiness, and competence after only one second of exposure (Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005). Todorov then compared these evaluations to the outcomes of the actual elections and found that ratings of competence were positively and significantly correlated with the voting results: Candidates judged as relatively more competent were more likely to win their respective elections. A later study demonstrated that impressions formed in even less than a second—in fact in as little as one-tenth of a second—closely matched ratings by participants who had as much time as they needed to provide the evaluations on traits such as likeability, aggressiveness, attractiveness, competence, and trustworthiness (Willis & Todorov, 2006).
Ambady and Rosenthal (1992) found that ratings of graduate teaching fellows based on thirty seconds of muted videotape were very good predictors of the evaluations provided by students who spent the entire semester in their classes. Similarly, people can accurately determine male sexual orientation by looking at faces for as little as 50 milliseconds, providing additional evidence of the validity of rapid impressions (Rule & Ambady, 2008). Ambady and Rosenthal (1993) suggest that the ability to make these rapid inferences stems from older, more primitive areas of the brain, associated primarily with the X-system (Lieberman, 2007a). Accurate, rapid inferences about personality traits are formed not only from photos or brief physical encounters but also from other sources of information, including email, dormitory rooms, personal offices, and iPod music lists (see box on page 56) (Back et al., 2010; Gosling, Augustine, Vazire, Holtzman, & Gaddis, 2011; McAndrew & De Jonge, 2011; Wang, Moon, Kwon, Evans, & Stefanone, 2010).
In sum, humans are both extraordinarily fast and surprisingly adept at forming reasonably accurate impressions of others. Not only would this ability have provided our ancestors with adaptive advantages, but it likely helps facilitate successful navigation of our increasingly complex and relationship-dense social world. Humans rely on rapid processing in the person perception process but can and will be more deliberative when needed (Brewer, 1988; Fiske et al., 1999; Todorov & Porter, 2014).
Biases In Social Perception
In Chapter 3, we described some biases in human cognition, including the availability and representativeness heuristics. Here we’ll revisit the topic of cognitive biases in the context of person perception. One set of biases are called implicit personality theories or lay theories about the kinds of person characteristics that are typically found together (Asch, 1946; Bruner & Taiguri, 1954; Christensen, Drewsen, & Maaløe, 2014; Sedikides & Anderson, 1994). Implicit personality theories are, like schemas, knowledge structures that influence how we construe our social world (Dunning, 2003; Yeager et al., 2014). One of the most prevalent implicit personality theories in the United States is “what is beautiful is good,” which suggests that people who are physically attractive also possess a number of other positive characteristics, including higher intelligence, happier marriages, more occupational success, and overall happiness (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972; Wheeler & Kim, 1997). Recent research demonstrates that a person’s implicit theories about the covariation of particular pairs of traits in other people is partly a function of whether the perceiver believes he or she possesses the paired traits. People project patterns of traits that they detect in themselves onto other people (See Research Box 5.1) (Critcher & Dunning, 2009; Mehl, Gosling, & Pennebaker, 2006). For instance, if you see yourself as idealistic and confident that you can control your future, then you’ll likely think that, in general, people who are idealistic also believe they control their future (Critcher & Dunning, 2009).
Schemas, such as implicit personality theories, are learned and, like many other aspects of our psychology, are culture-based (Hoffman, Lau, & Johnson, 1986). Evidence for this stems from a study of memory for culture-based implicit personality theories embedded in the English and Chinese languages. Hoffman and colleagues (1986) provided participants with four personality sketches reflecting distinct character types. Two of the character types—artistic and liberal—were rooted in the English language, whereas the other two—shi gu and shen cang bu lou—were Chinese-based. Each character was given a name, but the personality type label was not provided to respondents. There were three groups of participants: One group spoke only English, a second group was English Chinese bilingual and read and responded to the materials in English, and the third group was also English Chinese bilingual but read and responded in Chinese. Five days after reading the four personality sketches, participants returned to the lab and wrote down their impressions of the four characters in either English or Chinese. One of the critical dependent measures was the number of character traits that respondents listed in their free responses
