The Formation Of Impressions

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

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

The 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 turn that can lead us to meet our new best friend or worst enemy.

What is an impression?

An impression is defined as the end result of an interactive phenomenon where there is an individual who perceives, a person who is perceived and information that emanates from it.

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

When it is observed, and then concluded, an impression has been formed. However, what happens during that covert process? How is it possible that just by looking at a person we know if we like them or not? These are the questions that the paradigms of printing that will be exposed next try to answer.

Kelly’s Implicit Personality Theories

Kelly (1955) studied impression formation in relation to the implicit theories of characterizing people. For this reason, the personal constructs of each one – whose measure 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 single most important organizer for the formation of an impression; while, for another person, the organizer could be humor or intelligence. Therefore, there are usually very different impressions in relation to the same person.

Personal constructs tend to 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 may have a TIP where intelligent people tend to be self-centered or shy subjects are good people. They are usually based on personal experiences.

The Asch configuration model

According to the model of Asch (1946), in the formation of impressions the information collected from the individual can be classified according to its “importance”. For this reason, he argues 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 impression is a complex configuration of information — physical appearance, non-verbal behavior, verbal communication… – organized gestaltly. This means that each trait influences and is influenced by the others.

Asch also studied how the presentation of information is relevant to complex information configuration. He 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 last.
• In the second group it was done the other way around.

Asch obtained evidence of the primacy effect on impression formation : the person was rated most favorably when good adjectives were presented at the beginning. The opposite happened in the impressions of the second group, 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 in the last position.

Anderson’s cognitive algebra

Anderson’s (1965) linear combination or cognitive algebra models are paradigms that have been discarded because they take very little account of the context of the person; they are very mechanistic.

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

Therefore, according to this model, the traits can be quantified, and have a constant value that can change according to 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 it considers that the situation in which one forms an impression is relevant.

In this paradigm, it is a question of looking for a mathematical formula that can predict the positive or negative result of the impressions. It seeks 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 might consider (from one to 10) the importance of certain traits in this way:

• Ingenious: 8.
• Attractive: 5.
• Entertaining: 10.
• Expressive: 6.
• Sweet: 4.

Although these scores do not vary, the importance of each trait does according to the context. Thus, the weight of the trait “attractive” in the general impression of a co-worker is 0.2; while the same “attractive” trait in a party companion can weigh 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 “attractive” attribute will more or less influence the formation of a positive impression.

Conclusions: why study impressions?

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

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