Impression Formation and its Determinants

 

The process if organizing diverse information into a unified and gestalt impression of the other person is called impression formation. How we develop our views is the concern of impression formation. It is influenced by gestalt philosophy which states that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. As such, we do not form impression by adding all the traits of a person rather we perceive these traits in relation to one another i.e., in a totality.

In impression formation, some traits have a bigger impact than others. This is because of implicit personality theory which refers to the beliefs of the person regarding what traits or characteristics tend to go together. It suggests that when the person possess some traits, they are likely to possess other traits as well. For example, we expect first-borns to be high achievers, and therefore also intelligent, ambitious and independent.

 

Determinants of Impression Formation

 

There are several models that explain how several units of information are integrated into an overall impression.  Such as:

1.     Additive model:

It maintains that each unit of information is assigned a value and added in with others to produce an overall impression of other person. It uses an arbitrary scale of ±1 to ±10. For example, the perceiver gives values to such traits as tolerant (6+), responsible (+7) and friendly (+5), so his overall impression will be equal to (6+7+5= +18). Likewise, if negative traits such as dishonest (-6) and stubborn (-4) are added, the score comes down to (-8). Favourableness increases with the addition of positive traits and the favourableness of our overall impression decreases with the addition of negative traits.



2. Averaging model:

This model proposes that the ratings of the traits are averaged rather than summed. In this model, the impact of new information depends on whether this new information is more favourable or less favourable than the overall impression. Incorporating a new mildly positive trait makes the overall impression less positive. For example, if sincere (+2) is added to the overall impression (friendly +5, tolerant +6, responsible +7 = 18/3= +6), the impression becomes less positive = (friendly +5, tolerant +6, responsible +7, sincere +2 = 20/4= +5). Whereas including a mildly negative trait like unimaginative (-2) to a strongly negative impression (attractive +2, stubborn -4, dishonest -6 = 8/3 = -2.67) makes the resulting impression less negative (attractive +2, stubborn -4, dishonest -6, unimaginative -2 = -10/4 = -2.5).



3. Order of information:

Many of the things we learn about others are ambiguous, and we often resolve this ambiguity by considering them in light of what we already know. Whether we view someone who is proud as either confident or conceited, someone who is satirical as witty or cynical, or someone who is undecided as open-minded or wishy-washy is open to interpretation and thus likely to be partly driven by the particular constellation of other traits that we know he or she already possesses. In this way, the beliefs that we already hold about someone can serve to bias how we respond to subsequent evaluative information.

Hence, there is an effect of the order in which we learn about someone’s traits on the impressions we form of him or her. In one of his classic demonstrations, Asch (1946) showed that participants developed more favorable impressions of someone when they learned about his more positive traits (e.g., intelligent, industrious) followed by his more negative ones (e.g., stubborn, envious) than when they learned the very same traits in the reverse order.


Other models: 
4. Positive & negative information: (will be updated soon)

5. Consistency: (will be updated soon)