Impression formation

You're at a party.
You see a guy walking into the room.
You scan him from top to bottom.
You take in his appearancetattooed arms, pierced
eyebrow, colored hair.
He comes and stands next to youyou think he smells of
smoke.
http://www.scsu.edu/files/Counselor_
%20Education/CourseSyllabus.pdf
You immediately tag him as being someone who enjoys
partying, smokes up a lot, has no regard for authority, and
is really careless at his job.
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 You formed an opinion, an impression about the
man, simply by taking in his appearance.
human mind has tendency to form impressions
about others based on our expectations from
them, on certain events from the past and our
learned behavior. That is why, so much stress has
been laid on the power of the first impression.

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 Every time we come across a new person,
we tend to form an impression about
him/her.
It happens without us even realizing it.
However, these impressions are likely to
change as one begins to interact with the
person.

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 Why do we form impressions?
There are so many stimuli that we are faced
with on a daily basis that it would be
overwhelming to have to study each one of
them separately.
That is why, given our past experiences, our
interactions with people, and the things we
read and are told, we form certain
impressions in our mind so that we can
categorize people and bracket them.
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The following is how we tag people.

Purpose of the Perceiver

Social Context
Memories
cognitive shortcuts for judging others

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Factors Influencing Impression
Formation
These are the following factors that influence our impression formation.
Appearance
Personality traits
Looks
Profession
Company that you keep
Skin color
Community
Age
Gender
Class
Preference for color

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 Impression Formation.
We form impressions of people rapidly so we
need to make short cuts. According to Solomon
Asch impression formation is influenced by two
major types of traits.

Central Traits- Honesty, friendliness,

meanness, happiness, introverted, extroverted-
traits that are stable across time.

Peripheral Traits- Personality traits which are

affected by central traits.

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 Solomon Asch (1946)
Generally, it has been shown that some
information we acquire about people is
considered more important than other
information.
Asch refered to this important information
as "central traits", whilst the less important
information is referred to as "peripheral
traits".

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 In his studies, Asch took two groups of
participants.
Each was given a list of traits (intelligent,
skilful, industrious, determined, practical,
cautious) and one other.
The last trait was "warm", for one group,
and for the other, "cold".

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 These groups were then given a list of other
traits (reliable, good-natured, etc) and asked
to choose which ones the person would
have.
The results showed a very strong correlation
between being given the word "warm", and
attributing this fictional person with more
favourable characteristics.
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 The same study was repeated, with different
variable words.
In this study, the words Warm/Cold were
replaced with "Polite" or "Blunt".
This study found very little difference
between the responses generated in each
group.

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 Series A ("warm")
A person who believes certain things to be
right, wants others to see his point, would be
sincere in an argument' and would like to
see his point won.
A scientist performing experiments and
persevering after many setbacks. He is
driven by the desire to accomplish
something that would be of benefit.
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 Series B ("cold")
A very ambitious and talented person who would
not let anyone or anything stand in the way of
achieving his goal. Wants his own way, he is
determined not to give in, no matter what
happens.
A rather snobbish person who feels that his
success and intelligence set him apart from the
run-of-the-mill individual. Calculating and
unsympathetic.
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 Asch's conclusion from these results that
certain traits are central to the impression we
have of people, because they influence our
perception of other, peripheral, traits. (i.e. the
words in the first study were deemed as central
traits, hence why they made a difference, whilst
those used in the second study were peripheral
traits, hence making much less of a difference.)

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 PERSON PERCEPTION
Person perception or social perception is judging a person in
social setting.

Issues
Shortcuts in judging others
Stereotyping
Halo error
Projection
Contrast effect
Selective perception
attribution

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 SOCIAL PERCEPTION
a. Halo Effect: Drawing a general impression about an individual on
the basis of a single characteristic.
b. Stereotyping: Judging someone on the basis of ones perception of
the group to which that person belongs.
c. Selective Perception: People selectively interpret what they see on
the basis of their interests, background, experience and attitudes.
OR Selective perception is our tendency to choose information
that supports our viewpoints while ignoring information that
threatens our viewpoints.
d. Contrast Effect: Contrast Effect is enhancement of perceived
differences between stimuli resulting from putting them side by
side.
e. Projection: This tendency to attribute one's own characteristics to
other people is called projection.
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 SOCIAL PERCEPTION
Attribution: Attribution refers simply to how people
explain the cause of anothers or their own behaviour.
Attribution theory: When individuals observe behaviour,
they attempt to determine whether it is internally or
externally caused.
INTERNALLY caused behaviors are those that are
believed to be under the personal control of the
individual.
EXTERNALLY caused behavior is seen as resulting
from outside causes; that is, the person is seen as having
been forced into the behavior by the situation

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 Distinctiveness is the degree to which the
person behaves the same way in other
situations.
Consensus is the extent to which peers in
the same situation behave the same way
Consistency refers to the frequency of a
particular behavior over time

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KELLYS ATTRIBUTION
THEORY

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 ATTRIBUTION THEORY
Fundamental attribution error (the correspondence bias): The
tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and
overestimate the influence of internal factors while making
judgments about the behaviour of others.
When we focus on others behaviour, we tend to begin by
assuming that their actions reflect their underlying
characteristics. Then we attempt to correct for any possible
effects of the external world-the current situation-by taking
these into account. This correction, however, is often
insufficient. We dont make enough allowance for the impact of
external factors- we dont give enough weight to possibility of
a traffic jam or a slippery floor when reaching our conclusions.
Cultural difference is perceived regarding universality of this
error.
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Self Serving bias: The tendency for individuals to attribute their
own successes to internal factors while putting the blame for
failures on external factors.
One theory suggests we attribute positive outcomes to internal
causes but negative ones to external causes because we expect to
succeed and have a tendency to attribute to exptected outcomes
to internal causes more than to external causes.
Another theory suggests that motivation to enhance our self
esteem and desire to look good to others leads to self serving
bias.
This bias is more common in individualistic culture than
collectivistic culture.

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 SOCIAL BEHAVIOR
Social behavior is the behavior directed toward
society or taking place between members of
the society. Social behavior includes
interaction among people and their thinking
toward others. Issues:
Attitude
Persuasion
Prejudice
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 ATTITUDES
According to R. A. Baron (2009) Attitudes are lasting
evaluations or judgments concerning objects, people
or events that are stored in memory.
I. The characteristics of attitudes are:
They tend to persist unless something is done to change
them.
They can be favorable or unfavorable.
They are directed towards objects, people or events
about which a person has feelings.
Attitudes consists of cognitive, affective and
behavioural component.
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 Attitudes
II. Components of Attitudes
Attitudes consist of three components:
Cognitive Component
Affective Component
Behavioral Component

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 Attitudes
III. Attitude Formation
Attitudes make up the personality. An attitude is a
persistent tendency to feel and behave in a
particular way toward objects people or
events. Attitude formation is influenced by
various factors such as:
Operant conditioning, observational learning,
classical conditioning, genetic factors

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 Inconsistent attitudes: Cognitive
Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance refers to any incompatibility
that an individual might perceive between two or
more altitudes, or between behavior and
attitudes. Festinger proposed that the desire to
reduce dissonance would be determined by:
the importance of the elements creating the
dissonance,
the degree of influence the individual believes he or
she has over the elements, and
the rewards that may be involved in dissonance
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 PERSUASION

This process through which one or more persons attempt to alter the attitudes
of one or more others is called persuasion. Regarding efficacy of efforts to
change attitudes or persuasion psychologists have learned some interesting
facts:
1. Experts are more persuasive than non experts
2. Messages that do not appear to be designed to change our attitudes are often
more successful in this respect than ones that seem intended to reach this goal.
3. People are sometimes more susceptible to persuasion when they are distracted
by some extraneous event than when they are paying full attention to what is
being said.
4. When an audience holds attitudes contrary to those of a would be persuader, it
is often more effective for the communicator to adopt a two-sided approach.
5. People who speak rapidly are often more persuasive than persons who speak
more slowly.

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 PREJUDICE
Prejudice is powerful negative attitudes toward the members of
specific social groups based solely on their membership in
that group.

THE ORIGINS OF PREJUDICE: CONTRASTING

PERSPECTIVES
Many different explanations for the origins of prejudice have
been proposed. Some of the influential ones are:
a. Direct Intergroup Conflict: Competition and conflict theory as a
Source of Bias.
b. Social Categorization: leading to ultimate attribution error.
c. The Role of Social Learning.
d. Cognitive Sources of Prejudice: The Role of Stereotypes
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 TECHNIQUES OF REDUCING
PREJUDICE
a. Breaking the Cycle of Prejudice: Learning Not to
Hate.
b. Direct intergroup contact and Personal Contact
as a Means of Reducing Prejudice
Contact Hypothesis suggest that increased contact
between members of different groups will reduce
prejudice between them, and there are several good
reasons for predicting that such a strategy might
prove effective
c. Recategorization: Resetting the Boundary
Between "Us" and "Them."
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 SOCIAL INFLUENCE:
CHANGING OTHERS'
BEHAVIOR
Social influence is any process whereby a
persons attitudes, opinions, beliefs or
behaviors are altered or controlled by some
form of social communication. Social
influence can also be defined as the effort by
one or more individuals to change the
attitudes, perception or behaviors of one or
more others. It includes conformity,
compliance, obedience, minority social
influence etc.
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SOCIAL INFLUENCE:
CHANGING OTHERS'
BEHAVIOR

Issues in social influence

Conformity
Compliance
Obedience

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 CONFORMITY

Conformity means adjusting ones

behaviour to align with the norms of the
group. Social Norms are rules indicating
how individuals ought to behave in specific
situations. Social norms seem to take two
basic forms: Descriptive and injunctive
norms
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 SOCIAL INFLUENCE:
CHANGING OTHERS'
BEHAVIOR
Solomon Asch "became famous in the 1950s, following experiments which
showed that social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously
incorrect. The way he did this was through an experiment in which
participants were shown a card with a line on it, followed by another card with
3 lines on it labeled a, b, and c. The participants were then asked to say which
line matched the line on the first card. At first, the subject would feel very at
ease in the experiment, as he and the other participants gave the obvious
answer. Shortly after, the "participants" in front of the subject would start all
giving the same wrong answer. Solomon Asch thought that the majority of
people would not conform to something obviously wrong, but the results
showed that an alarming number of participants gave the wrong answer.
From the experiments Asch conducted it showed that the majority of
candidates conformed. Some insisted that they didn't realize they were
conforming. Though it shows that if one conform to group pressure, you dont
stand out and so just become one of them and you can easily fall into a trap of
being wrong.

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 COMPLIANCE
Compliance refers to the act of responding favourably to an explicit
or implicit request offered by others.
a. Tactics Based on Liking: Ingratiation.
Ingratiation is a technique for gaining compliance by causing others to
have positive feelings about us, or liking for us, before we attempt to
influence them.
b. Tactics Based on Commitment or Consistency: The Foot in the
Door.
Foot-in-the-Door Technique is a technique for gaining compliance in
which a small request is followed by a much larger one.
c. Tactics Based on Reciprocity: The Door in the Face.
It is a technique for gaining compliance in which a large request is
followed by a smaller one.
d. Tactics Based on Scarcity: Playing Hard to Get
Playing hard to get a tactic in which individuals try to create the
impression that they are very popular or very much in demand.
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 COMPLIANCE
d. The Pique Technique
A technique that involves piquing (stimulating) target persons interest
by unusual requests. As a result, they do not refuse requests. (Asking
for more donation (of money) by showing how similar other people
have donated).
e. Thats not all Technique
A technique that involves offering target persons additional benefits
before they have decided whether to comply with or reject specific
requests.
f. Low ball Technique
A technique in which an offer or deal is changed (made less attractive)
after the target person has accepted it.
g. The deadline Technique
A technique in which target persons are told that they have only limited
time to take advantage of some offer or to obtain some item.
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 OBEDIENCE: SOCIAL
INFLUENCE BY DEMAND
Obedience is a form of social influence in which one individual issues
orders to another to behave in specific way and other one follows
it.
Stanley Milgrams experiment tested how far an ordinary person will
go to obey authority. The design involved a teacher and a learner.
The learner was strapped in a chair and an electrode was placed on his
wrist. The learner was told he must respond correctly to a memory test
involving word pairs. The teacher was set before a machine that deals
shocks if the learner responds incorrectly. The teacher is a nave
subject, and the learner is an actor. Measured was how far a person
will proceed to inflict pain on a victim. The shocks are administered in
increasing volume; the victim experienced terrible pain, and the
teacher suffered a dilemma: to continue obeying the experimenter and
continue with the shocks or to break with authority.

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 OBEDIENCE: SOCIAL
INFLUENCE BY DEMAND
Results from the experiment:
Milgram's results showed that, contrary to
expectations, a majority of civilian volunteers
obeyed orders to apply electric shocks to
another person. In general, more submission
was elicited from "teachers" when (1) the
authority figure was in close proximity; (2)
teachers felt they could pass on responsibility
to others; and (3) experiments took place under
the auspices of a respected organization
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