Social Psychology Revision Essay One

Impression formation

What do we mean by impression formation? How we perceive other people

What do we mean by impression formation? A number of factors have been found to influence the impressions formed: Social schemas Stereotypes Primacy and recency effects Central traits

Social schemas A schema is an organised pattern of knowledge or behaviour that is derived from past experience and that we can use to interpret the world around us Schemas allow us to infer details to make a situation or person more understandable They allow us to make sense of our social world

Bower (1979) Asked participants to write a description of a restaurant script and then told them about a meal in a restaurant Schemas for a restaurant tended to focus on being shown to a table, given a menu, ordering food and paying for a bill. When tested on the recall of the story later, participants gave details that had not been in the original story Indicated an assumption had been made as to the content of the story relating to their existing restaurant schema

Fiske and Taylor (1991) Self schemas Identified four main schema types Self schemas Contain specific characteristics and traits that are central to our self-image Role schemas Hold the expectations that we have about people who hold specific roles in society Event schemas Scripts that tell us what to expect in a particular setting Person schemas Contain knowledge about the people we know. We have a schema for each person we know, which holds concepts about that person and allows us to generate expectations

Tip: Event schemas are not always useful as part of an answer to a question on impression formation as they inform us about situations rather than people They can be made relevant only if you link event schemas to forming impressions of people

A schema is a personal belief or expectation about a person or group Social schemas A schema is a personal belief or expectation about a person or group If these expectations are similar to other people’s beliefs, they are called stereotypes

Stereotypes are usually negative, but they can also be positive A set of beliefs and generalisations, often based on a single characteristic, about a group where all members are believed to be the same Stereotypes are usually negative, but they can also be positive

Duncan (1976) Carried out a study into racial stereotypes Showed participants a film of two people arguing with four conditions A white person pushed a white person A black person pushed a white person A white person pushed a black person A black person pushed a black person When participants rated the push for ‘aggressiveness’ the black person was always rated as more aggressive

Katz & Braly (1933) Investigated ethnic stereotypes Students at Princeton University were presented with a list of ethnic groups (Americans, Jews Negroes etc.) and 84 words describing personality Asked to list 5 or 6 traits which were typical of that group Students showed considerable agreement especially about negative traits Students who has no personal contact with any members of the ethnic groups also agreed 1951 – less agreement of unfavourable traits found 1967 – re-emergence of social stereotypes, but in the direction of more favourable ones

Katz & Braly (1933) Group 1933 1951 1967 Americans Industrious Intelligent Materialist Ambitious Progressive Materialistic Pleasure loving Individualistic Conventional Japanese Shrewd Sly Imitative Efficient Nationalistic Treacherous Jews Mercenary Grasping Negroes Superstitious Lazy Happy go lucky Ignorant Musical Ostentatious

Primacy and recency effects The primacy effect – what we learn first about a person can bias our impression The recency effect – what we learn last about a person can bias our impression

Asch (1946) Demonstrated the primacy effect in an experiment Gave one group of participants a list of words describing a person: ‘intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious’ Gave a second group the same words but in reverse order Two different impressions were formed, a much more positive rating being given to the first group, showing a strong primacy effect

Luchins (1957) Investigated the primacy and recency effect using more information about a fictitious person Presented students with two paragraphs about ‘Jim’ One made him sound like an extrovert (outgoing); the other like an introvert (shy) The two paragraphs could be combined to produce a short story about Jim. Some of the participants read the paragraph which presented Jim as an extrovert first and others read the introvert paragraph first Groups showed the first part of the description had more influence on the impression formed. 78% who read the extrovert paragraph first rated him as friendly, whereas only 18% who read the introvert description first judged him as friendly

Jones (1968) investigated whether the primacy effect would occur in a situation involving a person attempting to solve a series of problems Participants watched a male student attempting to solve 30 difficult multiple choice questions Group 1: saw the person being successful near the beginning of the test Group 2: saw the person being successful towards the end of the test Control: in each condition the person solved exactly 15 out of the 30 problems correctly He was judged more capable if success came at the beginning of the series rather than towards the end with participants who saw the success clustered at the beginning estimated an average 21 correct whereas those who saw the success towards the end estimated 13

Luchins (1954) Recency effects occur when there is a time delay between two tasks

Central traits Some traits are more powerful at influencing impression formation than other traits Central traits, such as the dimension warm-cold, seem to have a much greater effect than peripheral traits such as polite-blunt

Asch (1946) Investigated whether central traits are influential in shaping a general impression of people Group A: list of adjectives describing a fictitious person: intelligent, skilful, industrious, warm, determined, practical, cautious Group B: same but with word ‘cold’ Group C & D: same but with ‘polite’ or ‘blunt’ Participants given the traits ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ made extreme judgements – warm: 91% judged person to be more generous compared with 8% cold. No differences found for groups C & D – 56%

Kelley (1950) Conducted a study where a guest lecturer was described to a group of students as either ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ before the lecture After the lecture the students rated him on a number of characteristics The ratings were affected by the prior information, with the ‘warm’ group rating him as more interesting and more competent than the ‘cold’ group The members of the ‘warm’ group were also observed to be more interactive during the lecture

Evaluation Why the Kelley (1950) study is considered more ecologically valid than the study by Asch (1946). Kelley used a real person – a guest lecturer in his study, which is more true to life than simply giving people a list of adjectives that describe a person, which is what occurred in the Asch study

Evaluation Asch’s study lacked ecological validity because it was simply a list of adjectives and not a real person, and therefore it was not true to the real world The bias in impression formation, found in studies into central traits and primacy effects, has implications for real life. For example, during interviews, it is crucial to come across as warm and give a good first impression Social schemas are useful as they allow us to interpret a complex world quickly, but we should be aware that they may lead us to pay attention only to things that we expect and therefore miss other important information.

Essay Question Stuart applied for a job working at his local electrical store, ‘Larskys’. On his application form he described himself as intelligent, warm and hardworking. He was invited by Mr Winchester, the owner of the store, to attend an interview. At the start of his interview Stuart dropped a pen on the floor and spilt coffee over his trousers. Using your understanding of explanations of impression formation discuss the impressions which may have been drawn about Stuart. In your answer, make reference to social schemas, stereotyping, central traits and the primacy and recency effect. Support your answer by making reference to at least two theories and two research studies and evaluate how useful they are for aiding our understanding of impression formation.