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 they could get know about the individual more afterward, the impression of the individual as one of the group would never be overwritten. This could be an evidence for the integrative cognitive process. However, it was argued that impression formation would be different for different subjects. For a person who was dogmatical and obstinate, the first impression of others which effected by stereotype would hardly be changed. But for an open and agreeable person, the effect of stereotype might be less. Although the stereotype played an important role in impression formation, people tried to integrate information for making an over-all meaningful structure of impression of others. Asch (1946) proposed an idea of “Gestalt formulation”: during the process of impression formation, traits are evaluated in terms of other traits and can interact with one another. This showed that the impression formation process is dynamic. The whole impression changed consistently as new information was taken. Nevertheless, to renew the impression based on a certain direction. The change of impression would never be far from the main traits. The Despite both of stereotype and gestalt formulation, another possibility for impression which suggested by Asch at the same time is interesting. Summative formulation interprets impression as the sum of all characteristics that we have observed. Within this formulation, impression =a+b+c+d+e. This explanation supported neither integrative perspective nor dynamic perspective. It suggested new view about how to define the impression formation process.
In addition, the influences of a primacy effect and a recency effect will be presented. Luchins (1957) demonstrated both a primacy and a recency effect in an early classic study on impression formation. The attention decrement hypothesis supported the primacy effect which was the initial information played a dominated role in impression formation. However, Luchins’ paragraph reading tasks support not only the primacy effect but also the recency effect. He distinguished that the primacy effect would be more obvious when the two paragraphs were read one immediately after the other while the recency effect worked as there was time delay between reading the paragraphs and the delay was filled with a distracting task. This provided a way to balance the debate between dynamic and cognitive processes.
The self- fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968) could be an evidence for integrative process. This approach illustrated that one’s expectations about a person eventually tend to make that person behave in ways that confirm those expectations by a study called Pygmalion in the classroom (1968). In this study, teachers evaluated pupils with higher IQ scores to be more curious, more interested and happier than the lower IQ ones. However, there was no evident difference between pupils’ IQ scores. This kind of evaluations which came from expectations demonstrated that the impressions based on previous information which we believed. Moreover, this study did not show how teachers will reflect if they know that there was no difference between pupil’ IQ. If teachers changed their attitudes towards different IQ pupils, it might be proved that the impression formation is a dynamic process.
Negative information about somebody tends to take on more importance in impression formation than positive information (Skowronski and Carlston, 1989). That might be due to the negative information was interpreted as signal potential danger, and individuals seem to be aware of its crucial value. According to this believe, negative information was assigned more attentions. This process illustrated that new information was taken for modifying the impressions. Also, it indicated that the method for encoding information which is taking negative information firstly in this case was part of the integrative cognitive process. The encoding method that used by a person would be consistent for a fairly long period.
In conclusion, the impression formation of other people would be based on certain information which was already known. However, the further changes would take place as well. The process is both dynamic and integrative.
Reference:
Weber, A. L. (1992). Social Psychology. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Hilton, J. L., & Hippel, W. V. (1996). Stereotypes. Annual Review of Psychology. 47, 237-271.
Asch, S. E. (1946). Forming impressions of personality. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 41, 258-290.
Luchins, A. S. 1957: Primacy and recency in impression formation. In C. Hovland (ed.), The order of presentation in persuasion. New Haven, CO: Yale University Press.
Resenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. F. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehard and Wilson.
Skrowronski, N. J., & Carlston, D. E. (1989). Negativity and extremity biases in impression formation: a review of explanations. Psychological Bulletin 105, 131-142.