lecture 1 - impression formation Flashcards
(41 cards)
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impression formation - what did Solomon Asch say about it
was he right
‘Impressions are highly complex’
-“We look at a person and immediately a certain impression of his character
forms itself in us. A glance, a few spoken words are sufficient to tell us a story
about a highly complex matter.”
- “This remarkable capacity we possess to understand
something of the character of another person, to form a
conception of him as a human being, as a center of life
and striving, with particular characteristics forming a
distinct individuality, is a precondition of social life.”
Solomon Asch, 1946, Forming Impressions of Personality - “We know that such impressions form with remarkable rapidity and with great
ease.”
are impressions slow or rapid
evidence
Impressions of trustworthiness, competence, likeability,
aggressiveness, attractiveness can be made in 100ms Willis & Todorov, 2006 Psych Science
- Trustworthiness in 33ms Todorov et al 2009 Social Cognition
what is the halo effect
-people who are more attractive - are deemed better
Halo effect: “what is beautiful is good” – Dion
JPSP, 1972
* Beautiful people expected to lead better
lives (more successful, better marriages etc)
* Beautiful people assumed to have more
socially desirable personality traits
Meta-analysis Eagly et al 1991 Psych. Bulletin
- strongest effects for social competence traits
- medium for intellectual competence
- no effects for integrity and concern for others
Beaty premium
-relative to unattractive peers, attractive people..
- paid around 5 to 10 percent more Hameresh & Biddle 1993,
Beauty and the Labor Market - receive lighter sentences in the criminal justice system Stewart, J. Applied Psychology 1980
- more attractive children are expected to attain higher grades by teachers Clifford & Walster 1974, Sociology of Education
impressions beyond beauty : financial lending
- trustworthy looking people given
better credit ratings than
untrustworthy looking people on real credit websites Duarte et al 2012 Review of Financial Studies - more likely to have loans funded
- trustworthy effect size equivalent to owning a house as collateral!
- (over and above social stereotypes
from gender, age etc)
impressions beyond beauty : criminal justice
- convicted criminals who look untrustworthy in police mugshots
more likely to face the death penalty than trustworthy-looking
criminals Rule & Wilson, 2017 Psych Science, - exonerated (innocent) people who look untrustworthy also more
likely to face the death penalty than trustworthy-looking people
impressions beyond beauty : voting
-evidence from 5 year olds making judgement
- more competent looking politicians (judged from political profile pictures)mmore likely to be elected Todorov et al 2005,
Science - result replicated when 5-year olds made the judgements
- “who would you choose to captain the ship?” Antonakis & Dalgas, 2009, Science
are impressions lasting : experiment
-results of using initial impressions
-results of fmri scan
- Participants given good, bad or neutral information about three individuals, then played trust game with them. (you give people money and ask them to make financial lending decisions) Delgado, Frank, & Phelps, 2005, Nature Neuroscience
- Participants didn’t rely fully on partners’ actual behaviour in
the game to predict partners’ intentions - Instead, participants used their initial impressions ,
- fMRI scanning showed activity in the caudate nucleus
(associated with reward learning) ONLY in neutral condition
(where no prior impression) - Suggests prior impressions disrupted learning from the game
Stereotype content model
psychological theory that explains how people perceive social groups based on two key dimensions
- Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social cognition
Fiske et al Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2006
the dimensions’ SCM
warmth
competence
warmth - what is their intention, good or bad? trustworthiness,
friendliness, kindness
Competence: do they have the ability to carry out their intention? capability, ability
what is the evolutionary perspective of the SCM (stereotype content model)
Evolutionary perspective: social
perception reflects ancestral selection pressures
‘Any way you look at it, most of the
problems facing baboons can be
expressed in two words: Other
baboons’
what was the stereotype content model originally created to explain
Originally created to explain
stereotypes, later applied to
impressions of individuals Fiske et
al 2002, JPSP
-
what does the SCM suggest about stereotypes and positivity
Pioneering: suggests that
stereotypes can be ambivalent
i.e. mixed in valence (positivity)
eg you can have high warmth and low competence
SCM experiment - sampling social groups and their ratings
-freely sampled common social groups (23)
-new participants rated these social groups on :
-warmth
-competence
-status
-competition (with someone like me’)
SCM experiment - sampling social groups and their ratings
-what did cluster analysis show
Cluster analysis on warmth and
competence showed mixed
stereotypes Fiske et al 2002, JPSP
- Competition predicts Warmth
(higher competition → lower
warmth) - Status predicts Competence
(higher status → higher
competence)
eg by prediction of these studies feminists are considered high in competence and low on warmth , vice versa for housewives
evidence / support on the SCM
- Content analysis on 1,124 recollected social episodes Wojciszke et al 1994 JPSP
- 73% of social episodes included morality (warmth) and agency
(competence) impression content - warmth (42%)
- competence (26%)
- both (5%, suggests dissociable)
support for SCM : impressions for individuals
Students asked to sort 64 traits (64 words) into groups of traits that were likely to cluster in the same person Rosenberg et al 1968 JPSP
- Multidimensional scaling of these similarity judgements found two or three dimensions
- Social (warmth) Social dimension more valanced(more strongly positive v negative) (people more likely to judge if your good or bad overall based on your warmth
- Intellectual (competence)
-activity as the third dimensions (challenges the SCM/bug two)
criticism of SCM model : halo effects
halo effect :positive impressions cluster together (e.g.
attractiveness halo affects everything in good or bad way)
- SCM model: dissociable dimensions
…. contradiction? if everything is influenced by attractiveness then how can we separate impressions into different dimensions
*reconcile with this: Warmth and competence impressions of individuals are positively related: r = .42 Rosenberg et al 1968 JPSP
- Halo effects exist across dimensions too
Criticism of SCM: Construct validity
morality v sociability
- Criticism of model: morality v sociability Leach et al 2007 JPSP
- Morality: trustworthiness, honesty, sincerity
- Sociability: friendliness, likeability, helpful
“One may smile and smile and be a villain”
People report morality as more important than sociability or
competence for in-group members Leach et al 2007 JPSP
- People also judge morality as more important than sociability
or competence for strangers Brambilla et al 2011 European J. Social Psych - Morality related traits more likely to be mentioned than social
warmth traits in real obituaries
Criticism of SCM: Construct validity
status acquired by prestige or dominance
- Prestige: status acquired through competence or expertise
- Dominance: status acquired through physical intimidation or
force
Zero-acquaintance paradigm: 36 same-sex groups of strangers
interacted without previously meeting before Cheng et al 2013 JPSP
- Peer judgements of prestige and dominance correlated with peer as
well as researcher judgements of influence - Prestige and dominance had similar levels of influence but effects were statistically dissociable
which is more important warmth or competence
-why?
‘primacy of warmth’
Warmth (due to importance for survival) argued to be:
1) More central
2) More salient (attention grabbing)
3) More important for overall valence (how positive or negative the impression is)
primacy of warmth : centrality
Asch experiment
Asch 1946 gave people lists of traits (sequentially) and asked to make
an overall impression of that person at the end of the list
Person 1: intelligent – skillful – industrious – warm - determined –
practical - cautious
Person 2: intelligent – skillful – industrious – cold - determined –
practical - cautious
1) People’s final descriptions were holistic, rounded
2) Extreme reversals in positivity of overall impression if “warm” got changed to “cold”, even with other desirable traits present (e.g. “intelligent”)
primacy of warmth : centrality
Asch experiment
results and extra experiments
- Asch’ findings often argued to represent the primacy of
warmth Fiske et al 2006, Trends in Cognitive Sciences - i.e. warmth traits are “central traits” that especially affect
impressions - He compared warm/cold (strong effect) with polite/blunt (less
strong effect
