Integrative and dynamic impression formation process.

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Integrative and dynamic impression formation process

In this essay, our impressions of other people will be discussed, as it is a cognitive process. It is both a dynamic process and an integrative process. Dynamic is defined as  “We constantly revise and modify our impressions as we receive new information about the person”. Moreover, the meaning for impressions as an integrative cognitive process is “we interpret each new piece of information about someone according to what we believe we already know”. These two definitions are contrary but consistent with each other.

Firstly, how the impression forming will be presented. Weber (1992) suggested that the impression formation was a cognitive process. It based on individual’s social concepts and the acquiring of social information. People gained social concepts from their experience, social culture, language, and etc. Therefore, a person would sort other people he encountered into different group by age, gender, race, and even the circumstance they were in. The understanding for such grouping that rooted the social concepts was hard to change. It would be the foundation for impressions of other people constantly. The influence would be extended from the first impression to the further judgement about others. This could be interpreted as an integrative aspect. On the other hand, a person would make further judgements about another one according to another’s personality and the judgement about the previous judgements (Weber, 1992). In short, the framework of impression showed that it is both a dynamic and integrative cognitive process.

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Next, the cognitive process would be examined more precisely.

Stereotype and the Gestalt formation will be compared. Stereotype was termed (Hilton & Hippel, 1996) as “fixed ways of thinking about people that put them into categories and don’t allow for individual variation”. It involved classifying people according to a set of pre-established criteria, on the basis of some superficial characteristic—like colour skin, gender, and etc. People believed that they understand the group as they labelled it. Therefore, they viewed the individuals in the group on the based of the their previous understanding of the group as a whole. Even ...

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