Perceiving individuals and groups: expectancies, dispositional inferences, and causal attributions

Two experiments investigated differences in forming impressions of individual and group targets. Experiment 1 showed that when forming an impression of an individual, perceivers made more extreme trait judgments, made those judgments more quickly and with greater confidence, and recalled more information than when the impression target was a group. Experiment 2 showed that when participants were forming an impression of an individual, expectancy-inconsistent behaviors spontaneously triggered causal attributions to resolve the inconsistency; this was not the case when the impression target was a group. Results are interpreted as reflecting perceivers' a priori assumptions of unity and coherence in individual versus group targets.     

Motivational influences on impression formation: outcome dependency, accuracy-driven attention, and individuating processes

How might being outcome dependent on another person influence the processes that one uses to form impressions of that person? We designed three experiments to investigate this question with respect to short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency. In all three experiments, subjects expected to interact with a young man formerly hospitalized as a schizophrenic, and they received information about the person's attributes in either written profiles or videotapes. In Experiment 1, short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency led subjects to use relatively individuating processes (i.e., to base their impressions of the patient on his particular attributes), even under conditions that typically lead subjects to use relatively category-based processes (i.e., to base their impressions on the patient's schizophrenic label). Moreover, in the conditions that elicited individuating processes, subjects spent more time attending to the patient's particular attribute information. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the attention effects in Experiment 1 were not merely a function of impression positivity and that outcome dependency did not influence the impression formation process when attribute information in addition to category-level information was unavailable. Finally, Experiment 3 manipulated not outcome dependency but the attentional goal of forming an accurate impression. We found that accuracy-driven attention to attribute information also led to individuating processes. The results of the three experiments indicate that there are important influences of outcome dependency on impression formation. These results are consistent with a model in which the tendency for short-term, task-oriented outcome dependency to facilitate individuating impression formation processes is mediated by an increase in accuracy-driven attention to attribute information.     

“Forgive Me,I'm New”: Three Experimental Demonstrations of the Effects of Attempts to Excuse Poor Performance

Three experiments were conducted to examine subjects’ impressions of the performance of employees believed to be new to their jobs. Experiment 1 was a laboratory experiment in which 88 undergraduate students evaluated the performance of an instructor giving a lecture. Experiment 2 was a naturalistic field experiment in which 118 shoppers at a discount store evaluated the performance of the employees who bagged their orders. Finally, Experiment 3 was a field experiment in which 69 people responding to a telephone survey evaluated the performance of the interviewer. In all three experiments, participants who were not adversely affected by the workers’ job performance evaluated the workers more highly when they were believed to be new than when they had no knowledge of workers’ experience. In this case, the positive impressions sought by identifying one's newness were observed. These effects were also found among subjects rating workers who performed their jobs well despite their new status, providing evidence of an augmentation effect. However, subjects who were adversely affected by the workers’ actions evaluated workers lower when they were believed to be new than when they had no knowledge of workers’ experience. As such, the desired impression management effects backfired. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Why most people disapprove of me: experience sampling in impression formation

Individuals are typically more likely to continue to interact with people if they have a positive impression of them. This article shows how this sequential sampling feature of impression formation can explain several biases in impression formation. The underlying mechanism is the sample bias generated when the probability of interaction depends on current impressions. Because negative experiences decrease the probability of interaction, negative initial impressions are more stable than positive impressions. Negative initial impressions, however, are more likely to change for individuals who are frequently exposed to others. As a result, systematic differences in interaction patterns, due to social similarity or proximity, will produce systematic differences in impressions. This mechanism suggests an alternative explanation of several regularities in impression formation, including a negativity bias in impressions of outgroup members, systematic differences in performance evaluations, and more positive evaluations of proximate others.     

I think I like you: Spontaneous and deliberate evaluations of potential romantic partners in an online dating context

The present research examined processes of impression formation within an online dating context. Across two studies, female participants formed impressions of a potential partner based on an online dating profile containing information about the target's facial attractiveness and self‐described ambition. Afterwards, deliberate evaluations of the target were assessed with a self‐report measure and spontaneous evaluations were measured with an affective priming task. The results showed that deliberate evaluations varied as a function of both self‐described ambition and facial attractiveness. In contrast, spontaneous evaluations varied only as a function of facial attractiveness. Experiment 2 further showed that these effects were independent of the order in which the two types of information had been encoded. The results are discussed in terms of associative and propositional processes, and the conditions under which these processes can lead to conflicting evaluations of the same potential romantic partner. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Perceived causality and perceived force: Same or different?

Visually perceived interactions between objects, such as animated versions of billiard ball collisions, give rise to causal impressions, impressions that one object produces some effect in another, and force impressions, impressions that one object exerts a certain amount of force on another. In four experiments, evidence for strong divergence between these two impressions is reported. Manipulations of relative direction of motion and point of contact between the objects had different effects on the causal and force impressions (Experiment 1); delay between one object contacting another and the latter starting to move had a stronger effect on the causal impression than on the force impression (Experiment 2); a context of other moving objects significantly weakened the causal impression but not the force impression (Experiment 3); and there was an inverse relation between an impression of one object penetrating another and the amount of force the former was perceived as exerting on the latter (Experiment 4). These findings are explained in terms of differential effects of instructions on attention, and also in terms of differences in meaning between force and causality.     

The influence of power on the information search, impression formation, and demands in negotiation

Based on work by Fiske (1992), we argue that power differences influence information search strategies during negotiation. Experiment 1 showed that negotiators with less power ask more diagnostic than leading questions, and more belief-congruent than incongruent questions, when facing a competitive rather than cooperative partner. Experiment 2 suggested that this result was caused by stronger accuracy and impression motivation among less powerful negotiators. Experiment 3 showed that belief-congruent rather than incongruent questions produce more positive impressions during negotiation. And when less powerful negotiators are asked leading questions about their willingness to cooperate (compete), they responded with lower (higher) demands. The results are discussed in terms of a motivated information-processing model of negotiation.     

The influence of spatial context and the role of intentionality in the interpretation of animacy from motion

We present three experiments investigating how spatial context influences the attribution of animacy to a moving target. Each of our displays contained a moving object (the target) that might, depending on the way it moved, convey the impression that it was alive (animate). We investigated the mechanisms underlying this attribution by manipulating the nature of the spatial context surrounding the target. In Experiment 1, the context consisted of a simple static dot (the foil), whose position relative to the target's trajectory was manipulated. With some foil positions--for example, when the foil was lying along the path traveled by the target--animacy judgments were elevated relative to control foil locations, apparently because this context supported the impression that the target was "reacting to" or was in some other way mentally influenced by the foil. In Experiment 2, contexts consisted of a static oriented rectangle (the "paddle"). On some trials, the target collided with the paddle in a way that seemed to physically account for the target's motion pattern (in the sense of having imparted momentum to it); this condition reduced animacy ratings. Experiment 3 was similar, except that the paddles themselves were in motion; again, animacy attribution was suppressed when the target's motion seemed to have been caused by a collision with the paddle. Hence, animacy attributions can be either elevated or suppressed by the nature of the environment and the target's interaction with it. Animacy attribution tracks intentionality attribution; contrary to some earlier proposals, we conclude that attributing animacy involves, and may even require, attributing to the target some minimal mental capacity sufficient to endow the target with intentionality.     

Motivation and representational processes in adulthood: the effects of social accountability and information relevance.

The role of motivation in determining age differences in social representations was examined. Adults aged 20 to 83 years were given an impression formation task that attempted to manipulate motivation by varying the characteristics of the target and the extent to which participants would be held accountable for their impressions. It was hypothesized that increasing age would be associated with greater selectivity in the use of available cognitive resources to support the construction of accurate representations. Support for this hypothesis was obtained when trait inferences and recall were examined. Specifically, older adults made more accurate trait inferences and recalled more information when the target was similar in age or they were held accountable for their impressions. In contrast, younger adults demonstrated similar levels of accuracy across conditions. The fact that these effects were observed when cognitive resources was controlled suggests a motivational effect that is independent of age differences in cognitive ability.     

The Influence of Physical Appearance and Personality on the Exhibition of the Sexual Double Standard

The sexual double standard is the phenomenon whereby men are evaluated positively and women are evaluated negatively for engaging in identical sexual behavior. Although people can hold conflicting information (e.g., stereotypical vs. counterstereotypical individuating information) about other individuals, they attempt to form a consistent impression of individuals by inhibiting inconsistent information. The goal of the present study was to investigate whether individuating information about physical appearance and personality could mitigate the exhibition of the evaluations stereotypically associated with the sexual double standard. A sample of 596 participants evaluated a target person who reported having 1 or 12 sexual partners. Overall, participants evaluated highly sexually active female targets more positively than their male counterparts when the targets were either attractive and had a pleasant personality, or were unattractive and had an unpleasant personality. Results highlight the importance of the consistency of individuating information for evaluations of highly sexually active women.     

陌生面孔的印象加工:基于面孔特征的视角

个体往往会基于面孔特征对他人进行特质推断和社会评价,这种推进和评价会影响个体的行为决策。结合印象形成的双加工理论和面孔加工的双通路模型,本文提出陌生面孔的印象加工主要包括两类方式:一是基于社会分类线索及相似特征的加工,激活个体的刻板印象;二是基于熟悉面孔的相似性特征线索,通过过度泛化激活与熟悉他人相一致的印象。本文进一步阐述了两类面孔线索印象加工的过程和影响陌生面孔印象加工的相关因素。在此基础上,本文提出现有的研究对两类加工方式的交互作用及其加工阶段尚未作深入探讨,同时指出知觉者本人的人格特质和面孔信息对印象加工的影响也需要在未来研究中进一步探索。     

Not all happy people are lazy or stupid: Evidence of systematic processing in happy moods

Two experiments investigated the effects of mood on the use of global trait information in impression formation tasks. Participants in both experiments formed an impression of a target based on traits and a series of behaviors that were both consistent and inconsistent with the traits. In Experiment 1, participants in happy moods, relative to those in unhappy moods, made impression judgments that reflected the evaluative implications of the trait information to a greater extent than the behaviors, regardless of the order in which they received the information. In Experiment 2, both happy and sad participants engaged in systematic processing, as reflected by the recall data, but only happy participants’ recall of target information was significantly biased by the global trait information they received. These findings are consistent with the affect-as-information model in which affective cues influence the extent to which individuals rely on general knowledge and, importantly, are inconsistent with models that posit that happiness results in reduced motivation or ability to process information carefully.     

Conversation memory: the effects of speaker status on memory for the assertiveness of conversation remarks

We conducted three experiments to examine the effects of information about a speaker's status on memory for the assertiveness of his or her remarks. Subjects either read (Experiments 1 and 2) or listened to a conversation (Experiment 3) and were later tested for their memory of the target speaker's remarks with either a recognition (Experiment 1) or a recall procedure (Experiments 2 and 3). In all experiments the target speaker's ostensible status was manipulated. In Experiment 1, subjects who believed the speaker was high in status were less able later to distinguish between remarks from the conversation and assertive paraphrases of those remarks. This result was replicated in Experiment 2, but only when the status information was provided before subjects read the conversation and not when the information was provided after the conversation had been read. Experiment 2's results eliminate a reconstructive memory interpretation and suggest that information about a speaker's status affects the encoding of remarks. Experiment 3 examined this effect in a more ecologically representative context.     

情境公开性与印象管理动机对建议采纳的影响

实验1和实验2分别探讨在公开和匿名条件下期望印象和印象标签对建议采纳的影响。结果表明：（1）期望印象会影响建议采纳，在公开情境中，当个体期望形成温暖的印象时，会更多采纳建议；当个体期望形成能力印象时，建议采纳程度更低。（2） 印象标签会影响建议采纳，在公开情境中，当个体期望维持原有的温暖印象时，会更多采纳建议；个体期望维持原有的能力印象时，建议采纳程度更低。本研究证明建议采纳过程中存在印象管理机制。