IMPRESSION FORMATION

1.0 INTRODUCTION

In unit 5, we discussed perception a basic process. The unit also served to introduce us to other units in this course. You can now define the concept of perception. You can also identify and explain the factors affecting perception. We are now ready to discuss another unit you will find very interesting and applicable: impression formation. Let us take a look at what other content you should learn in this unit as specified in the objectives below.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

At the end of this unit, you should be able to:
state the general principles of impression formation; and
describe the type of information that you may use.

3.0 MAIN CONTENT

3.1 General Principles

Two freshmen who are destined to be roommates arrive at college and meet for the first time. Each one’s personality -how easy each one is to get along with, how considerate each is -will have an important effect on the other’s life. In the first few minutes of their meeting, each tries to form an impression of the other because they know they will be spending a great deal of time together during the year. How late does each one stay studying at night? What kind of music does the other like? How does each feel about parties in the room? They try to find out as much about each other as they can. People use whatever information that is available to form impressions of others -to make judgments about their personalities or hypotheses about the kind of persons they are. In thinking about how people form impressions of others, it is useful to keep in mind six quite simple and general principles:

1. People form impressions of others quickly, on the basis of minimal information and go on to impute general traits to them. 
2.  Perceivers pay special attention to the most salient features of a person, rather than paying attention to everything. We notice the qualities that make a person distinctive or unusual. 
3.  Processing information about people involves perceiving some coherent meaning in their behaviour. To some degree, we use the context of a person’s behaviour to if infer its meaning, rather than interpreting the behaviour in isolation. . We organize the perceptual field by categorizing or grouping stimuli. Rather than seeing each person as a separate individual, we tend to see people as members of groups -a person wearing white lab coat is a doctor, even though she may have features that make her quite different from other doctors,  We use our enduring cognitive structures to make sense of people’s behaviour. Upon identifying a woman as a doctor, we use our information about doctors more generally to infer the meaning of her behaviour. 
4. A perceiver’s own needs and personal goals influence how he or she perceives others. For example, the impression you find of someone you meet only once is different from the impression you form about your new roommate (Shoda & Mischel, 1993). 

SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 1

Think of your arrival at the study centre for your Distance Learning Programme. You meet a fellow student who also intends to use the library where you also intend to work. You find out he registers for the same course as you. In the first minutes of your meeting, state the impressions you may have of the fellow student.

Well done. Let us continue our discussion

3.2 The Information we use to Form Impression

Our knowledge and expectations about others are determined by the impressions we form of them. A glance at someone’s picture or at an individual passing on the street gives us ideas about the kind of person he/she is. Even learning a name tends to conjure up-images of what its owner is like. When two people meet, if only for an instant, they form impression of each other. With more contact, they form fuller and richer impressions .that determine how they behave towards each other, how much they like each other, whether they will associate often, and so on. The following is worthy of note.

Physical Cues

As this discussion implies, generally we draw on other people’s appearance and behaviour to infer qualities about them. Such factors can lead us to form remarkably detailed impressions. The observation that a person is wearing conservative clothes, for example, may lead to the imputation of a variety of other characteristics, such as being conservative politically. We also use behaviour to draw inferences about people. We observe a fellow distance learner helping a primary school pupil across the street and infer that he is kind.

Salience

People direct their attention to those aspects of the perceptual field that stand out the figure rather than to the background or setting the ground. This is termed the ‘figure-ground principle’. In the case of impression formation, the main implication is that most salient cues will be used most heavily. If a distance learner appears at the study centre in a wheelchair the first day of the first semester, everyone else in the library, everyone else in the room is likely to form an impression that is most heavily influenced by the fact of the person’s physical disability. Clothing, hair style, and perhaps even age and sex will be secondary.


Let us ask ourselves a relevant question: What determines the salience of a cue as opposed to another? Brightness, noisiness, motion, or novelties are the most powerful conditions, according to the Gestalt principles of object perception (discussed before). A man in a bright red sweater stands out in a crowded classroom, and the sweater is his most salient feature. The student who stands up shouting in the middle of a lecture and leaves the room draws our attention because she is noisy and moving and almost everything else in the classroom is quiet and stationary. We can therefore say that anything that makes a cue objectively unusual in its context makes it subjectively more salient and more likely to be noticed.


It is to be noted that salience has a number of consequences for person perception. First, salient behaviours draw more attention than do subtler, less obvious ones, (Taylor& Fiske, 1978). Second, salience influences perceptions of causality in that more salient people are seen as having influence over their social context (Taylor & Fiske, 1975). Let us cite other example. The student who sits in the front row of the classroom and asks an occasional question is more likely to be perceived as dominating the discussion than we the student who sits 'in the back and contributes just as much.


Salience increases the coherence of impression. If the salient person is a member of a stereotyped group, such as ‘drug addict’, he/she will be seen as possessing other stereotyped attributes of that group, such as criminal tendencies, weak moral character, and a lack of honesty.


It is important for you to note that salient stimuli draw the most attention. They are seen as the most causally powerful, they produce the most extreme evaluative judgments. The effects of salience are sufficiently interesting and exciting to attract the perceiver’s attention.

SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2

With the use of principles 1, think of situations where you can form impression of others?

4.0 CONCLUSION

In this unit, you have learnt what the general principles of forming impressions of others are. You have therefore learnt the information we use to form impressions. The most important of this are physical cues and salience cues.

5.0 SUMMARY

 What you have leant in this unit concerns general principles of impression formation
 You also learnt the information we use to form impressions.

Amongst the most important of such information are physical cues and salience

6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT

 Explain any three general principles of impression formation. 2. Briefly describe physical cues and salience as some of the information we use to form impression.