Context
Impressions are ideas and thoughts we get about a certain thing/ person from a limited amount of information. Thus, essentially, they are cognitive short cuts.
This is because when making an impression, we use the information presented, schemas and our own deduction.
We like deducing and finding answers. The problem is that our way of reasoning or deducing isn’t always the most logical or correct way. And there are certain types of errors we often make.
These are called biases. Biases are another type of heuristic and is defined as errors made when judging something, someone …
Types of biases
There are many different biases that we have. Too many to list all of them. But if we look at biases that are used when making impressions of others, we can narrow down to some main ones.
The positivity/ negativity bias
When there is no noticeable negative information, we usually assume that the person is a good person.
However, in general, negative information gets more attention from the brain than positive information does. This makes it easier to find negative information, especially once one has been found and gives it a strong effect on the impression.
The primacy/ recency effect
Information comes in different orders. Information that comes first and last is usually remembered better than anything that comes in between.
This is also why during the tip of the tongue phenomenon, you usually remember the first and last letters of the word but not the middle of it.
Because of this difference, information presented first and last will leave a strong influence on the impression made.
Physical appearance
Although some of us may not like this one, physical appearance actually has an influence on many factors.
One famous study found that for the same individual, people would estimate that person to be taller depending on his position. The more important his position was, the taler they estimated the height.
Good looking/ attractive men were thought to be better at their jobs while for women it was the opposite.
Personal construct and the implicit personality theory
These two are more individual ways we form biases.
The personal construct is how people develop different ways to form impressions of others. Thus an individual born in an environment where most women are very nice or mean will be more likely to form impressions of women as nice/mean.
Implicit personality theory is how people develop different ways of linking distinct traits. For example, one person might link the traits nice and smart. That person will then think nice people are smart and vice versa.
Although these two are developed individually, they are usually shared within people of the same culture.
The configurational model
This model links impressions and biases together.
It states that two types of traits exist in making impressions and that one has a disproportionate influence on the overall influence.
The central traits are the traits that have a strong effect and are salient and vivid while the peripheral traits have a much weaker influence.
Salient means it is a trait that makes the individual stand out from other people and vivid means it is a trait that stands out from other traits of the individual.
Biases are what create the central and peripheral traits as it gives different strengths of influence on different information.
Emotions
It us said that there are 4 ways we process information of others.
Direct access, Motivated processing, Heuristic processing and Substantive processing.
The later 2 are strongly affected by emotions. While heuristic process is mainly processing information using short cuts, substantive processing is careful judgements made from the available information.
A positive mood will lead to positive information and a negative mood will lead to negative information to be kept. This is called mood congruence.
This is especially strong for first impressions as they generate emotions faster than later evaluations which will generate more complex emotions but slower.
Direct access is simply the use of schemas and categories.
This model also shows that motivation changes our making of impressions. If we are motivated to do or behave in a certain way when processing information, we will remember information that is relevant to the goal more.
Part 1 : Types of schemas
Part 2 : Schemas, use and relation with time
Next Part : Attributions. What and why
Part 5 : Attributions in different contexts and styles
Part 6 : Attribution biases
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