The formation of impressions

The impression, that is, the first opinion that we usually have of the people we observe, know or simply meet is a phenomenon studied by social psychology.

Furthermore, impression formation is not a process subject to chance. This process has been exposed in social and cognitive theories that we will proceed to explain, where biases play an essential role in developing an initial impression.

Impressions are so relevant because They will condition the subsequent interaction and our attitude towards it. Depending on the biases, heuristics or stereotypes, the impression will take a shape that can lead us to meet our new best friend or worst enemy.

What is an impression?

An impression is defined as the final result of an interactive phenomenon where there is an individual who perceives, a person who is perceived and information emanating from this.

This information may come from, among other things, the perceiver’s implicit theories of personality, theories that are personal and idiosyncratic.

When you observe it, and then conclude, an impression has been formed. However, what happens during this covert process? How is it possible that just by looking at a person we know if we like or dislike them? These are the questions that the printing paradigms that will be presented below try to answer..

Kelly’s implicit theories of personality

Kelly (1955) studied impression formation in relation to implicit theories of characterizing people. Therefore, each person’s personal constructs – whose measurement is not dimensional, but are usually based on binary categories – influence whether a person has one type of impression or another.

Thus, one can consider the characteristic of introspection as the most important isolated organizer for the formation of an impression; while, for another person, the organizer might be humor or intelligence. Thus, There are usually very different impressions in relation to the same person.

Personal constructs usually develop adaptively—from experiences—and are usually quite stable over time. In addition to personal constructs, Kelly finds that people also have their own implicit theories of personality (IPT).

These refer to general principles about the characteristics of certain types of people or others. Thus, a person can have a TIP where intelligent people tend to be self-centered or that shy people are good people. They are usually based on personal experiences.

The Asch configuration model

According to Asch’s (1946) model, in the formation of impressions the information collected from the individual can be cataloged according to its “importance”. Therefore, he defends that there are central features —which exert a greater influence on the final impression— and peripheral features —which, although they are there, do not seem so relevant—.

Asch defends that printing is a complex configuration of information —physical appearance, non-verbal behavior, verbal communication…— gestaltally organized. This means that each trait influences and is influenced by the others.

Asch also studied how the presentation of information is relevant to the complex configuration of information. She conducted an experiment in which he divided the participants into two groups.

The first group was presented with six personality traits of a hypothetical individual in the following order: intelligent, hard-working, impulsive, critical, stubborn and envious. In this case the “negative” adjectives were placed at the end. In the second group it was done the other way around.

Asch obtained evidence of the primacy effect in impression formation: The person was evaluated more favorably when the good adjectives were presented at the beginning. The opposite happened in the second group’s impressions, which were worse.

The opposite effect can also arise, the recency effect, when the person in front of us interests us little or we find ourselves distracted; In this case, the information that would prevail would be that presented last.

Anderson’s cognitive algebra

Anderson’s (1965) linear combination or cognitive algebra models are paradigms that have been discarded for taking too little into account the person’s context; They are very mechanistic.

Cognitive algebra refers to combining attributes with different valences into a positive or negative impression. So, Anderson considered the formation of impressions to be the result of mental mathematical accounting. Traits are weighted into a positive or negative impression depending on the context in which we find ourselves.

Therefore, according to this model, traits can be quantified, and have a constant value that can change depending on the perceiver. Likewise, impressions can be predicted as long as the value that perceivers assign to each trait is known.

The weighted average model

This model, which is within the linear combination models, is the one that makes the most sense since considers the situation in which one forms an impression to be relevant.

In this paradigm, it is about finding a mathematical formula that can predict the positive or negative result of the impressions. The aim is to weight and average the valence of all the components of the person..

Asch proposes the following mathematical formula that would predict the result of a print:

The importance given to each trait does not vary. For example, a person may rate (from one to 10) the importance of certain traits this way:

Witty: 8.Attractive: 5.Entertaining: 10.Expressive: 6.Sweet: 4.

Although these scores do not vary, the importance of each trait does depending on the context.. Thus, the weight of the “attractive” trait in the general impression of a co-worker is 0.2; while the same “attractive” trait in a party companion can weight 0.9.

The final result of the mathematical operation will be different, since 5 x 0.2=1 and 5 x 0.9=4.5. Depending on the context, the attribute “attractive” will have more or less influence on the formation of a positive impression.

Conclusions: why study impressions?

In general, people spend a lot of time thinking about other people. Some are known intimately, so that the impression has already lost its initial significance; Others are simply neighbors, colleagues, friends of friends, whose information we have about them materializes in our impression. Furthermore, these impressions are communicated to other people, influencing the way they create their own impression.

This way, Impressions are important aspects for social cognition and social relationships. Knowing the impression formation process can help us avoid stereotypes or harmful causal attributions, learn to give a good impression based on the information we give (and how we give it) or know how to identify the influence of our theories.

You might be interested…