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How Do We Form Impressions of Others?
Activity 4: Person Perception: How Do We Form Impressions of Others?
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- Time frame: Approximately 15 Minutes
- Setting: Online or face-to-face
- Source: Chapter 13 Social Psychology from Psychology, 7e by James S. Nairne and Dawn M. McBride
- Learning Objective: Explain how attitudes are formed, the functions they serve, and the factors that affect our attitudes toward others.
Physical Appearance
One of the most powerful determinants of a first impression is a person’s physical appearance. In fact, evidence suggests that we can form an initial impression, such as how trustworthy a person might be, after looking at a face for as little as 50 milliseconds (Todorov et al., 2009). Studies have shown that when we first look at people who are physically attractive, we assume that they are more intelligent and honest, better adjusted, and more socially aware than people with average looks (Eagly et al., 1991; Gutiérrez-García et al., 2019). In general, physically attractive people are also thought to be healthier (Kalick et al., 1998), more inclined to succeed academically (Chia et al., 1998), and less likely to get “carded” if they try to buy alcohol (M. McCall, 1997). These tendencies don’t diminish as we age—the elderly also show a strong tendency to attribute positive personality characteristics to attractive people (Larose & Standing, 1998).
Why do we rely on physical appearance to form a first impression? It seems like a rather shallow way to judge a person. The reason is simple: When you form a first impression, you use the information that’s available. You almost always notice the way a person looks, along with one’s facial expression, and perhaps even the way the person is walking or sitting. These raw materials are combined with your background knowledge to generate an expectation of what an encounter with that person might be like (Hehman et al., 2019).
Judging a book by its cover isn’t always an effective long-term strategy for impression formation. Not all people rely on physical appearance to the same extent (Livingston, 2001), and cultural background is important too—some cultures don’t rely on attractiveness as much as others (L. Wheeler & Kim, 1997). Further, our impressions of others, particularly first impressions, can be biased. As an example, when teachers in training who were mostly white (70%) and female (89%) were asked to judge the emotional expressions of Black and white children from novel photographs, the teachers judged the expressions of Black children to be angry more often than the expressions of white children, and the expressions of boys to be angry more often than those of girls (Halberstadt et al., 2020). These results were found along with unconscious (implicit) preferences for white faces in a cognitive task by the participants. Consider how these biases might play out in the classroom in a teacher’s first impression of a negative interaction between two students. Which children are more likely to be punished based on these impressions?
Time to Reflect
However, first impressions can be helpful in the short term if they are unbiased and accurate. They can help you form a quick assessment of a dangerous situation. If you are walking down the middle of a street and a Chihuahua is barking at you on one side and a pit bull is barking at you on the other side, which side will you choose to walk on? And how does your attitude about these dog breeds affect your decision of which side of the street to walk on?
Next - Activity 5: What’s Your Prediction: Does Stress Lower Resistance?
