Impression formation
Encyclopedia
Impression formation in social psychology (sociology)
refers to combining simultaneous experiences into emergent states that relate complexly to the sources. Research focuses mainly on impressions of individuals involved in social actions
. However, studies also deal with impressions of an individual occupying an identity who simultaneously displays a status characteristic, psychological trait, mood, or emotion.
's writings on balance theory
emphasized that liking or disliking a person depends on how the person is positively or negatively linked to other liked or disliked entities. Heider's later essay on social cognition
, along with the development of "psycho-logic" by Robert P. Abelson
and Milton J. Rosenberg, embedded evaluative processes in verbal descriptions of actions, with the verb of a descriptive sentence establishing the kind of linkage existing between the actor and object of the sentence. Harry Gollob expanded these insights with his subject-verb-object approach to social cognition, and he showed that evaluations of sentence subjects could be calculated with high precision from out-of-context evaluations of the subject, verb, and object, with part of the evaluative outcome coming from multiplicative interactions
among the input evaluations. In a later work, Gollob and Betty Rossman extended the framework to predicting an actor's power and influence. Reid Hastie wrote that "Gollob's extension of the balance model to inferences concerning subject-verb-object sentences is the most important methodological and theoretical development of Heider's principle since its original statement."
Gollob's regression
equations for predicting impressions of sentence subjects consisted of weighted summations of out-of-context ratings of the subject, verb, and object, and of multiplicative interactions of the ratings. The equations essentially supported the cognitive algebra
approach of Norman H. Anderson
's Information Integration Theory
. Anderson, however, initiated a heated technical exchange between himself and Gollob, in which Anderson argued that Gollob's use of the general linear model
led to indeterminate theory because it could not completely account for any particular case in the set of cases used to estimate the models. The recondite exchange typified a continuing debate between proponents of contextualism
who argue that impressions result from situationally specific influences (e.g., from semantics
and nonverbal communication
as well as affective
factors), and modelers who follow the pragmatic maxim
, seeking approximation
s revealing core mental processes. Another issue in using least-squares estimations is the compounding of measurement error
problems with multiplicative variables.
In sociology David R. Heise
relabeled Gollob's framework from subject-verb-object to actor-behavior-object in order to allow for impression formation from perceived events as well as from verbal stimuli, and showed that actions produce impressions of behaviors and objects as well as of actors on all three dimensions of Charles E. Osgood
's semantic differential
—Evaluation, Potency, and Activity. Heise used equations describing impression-formation processes as the empirical basis for his cybernetic theory of action, Affect Control Theory
.
Erving Goffman
's book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
and his essay "On Face-work" in the book Interaction Ritual focused on how individuals engage in impression management
. Using the notion of face as identity
is used now, Goffman proposed that individuals maintain face expressively. "By entering a situation in which he is given a face to maintain, a person takes on the responsibility of standing guard over the flow of events as they pass before him. He must ensure that a particular expressive order is sustained-an order that regulates the flow of events, large or small, so that anything that appears to be expressed by them will be consistent with his face." In other words, individuals control events so as to create desired impressions of themselves. Goffman emphasized that individuals in a group operate as a team
with everyone committed to helping others maintain their identities.
consisting of nine impression-formation equations, predicting outcome Evaluation, Potency, and Activity of actor, behavior, and object from pre-event ratings of the evaluation, potency, and activity of actor, behavior, and object.
Stability was a factor in every equation, with some pre-action feeling toward an action element transferred to post-action feeling about the same element. Evaluation, Potency, and Activity of behaviors suffused to actors so impressions of actors were determined in part by the behaviors they performed. In general objects of action lost Potency.
Interactions among variables included consistency effects, such as receiving Evaluative credit for performing a bad behavior toward a bad object person, and congruency effects, such as receiving evaluative credit for nice behaviors toward weak objects or bad behaviors toward powerful objects. Third-order interactions included a balance effect in which actors received a boost in evaluation if two or none of the elements in the action were negative, otherwise a decrement. Across all nine prediction equations, more than half of the 64 possible predictors (first-order variables plus second- and third-order interactions) contributed to outcomes.
Studies of event descriptions that explicitly specified behavior settings
found that impression-formation processes are largely the same when settings are salient, but the setting becomes an additional contributor to impression formation regarding actor, behavior, and object; and the action changes the impression of the setting.
Actor and object are the same person in self-directed actions such as the "The lawyer praised himself" or various kinds of self-harm
. Impression-formation research indicates that self-directed actions reduce the positivity of actors on the Evaluation, Potency, and Activity dimensions. Self-directed actions therefore are not an optimal way to confirm the good, potent, lively identities that people normally want to maintain. Rather self-directed actions are a likely mode of expression for individuals who want to manifest their low self-esteem
and self-efficacy
.
Early work on impression formation used action sentences like, "The kind man praises communists," and "Bill helped the corrupt senator," assuming that modifier-noun combinations amalgamate into a functional unit. A later study found that a modifier-noun combination does form an overall impression that works in action descriptions like a noun alone. The action sentences in that study combined identities with status characteristics, traits
, moods
, and emotion
s. Another study focused specifically on emotion descriptors combined with identities (e.g., an angry child) and again found that emotion terms amalgamate with identities, and equations describing this kind of amalgamation are of the same form as equations describing trait-identity amalgamation.
On the other hand, each culture weighted the core effects distinctively. For example, the impact of behavior-object Evaluation consistency was much smaller in Germany than in the U.S.A., Canada, or Japan, suggesting that moral
judgments of actors have a somewhat different basis in Germany than in the other cultures. Additionally, impression-formation processes involved some unique interactions in each culture. For example, attribute-identity amalgamations in Germany involved some Potency and Activity interactions that did not appear in other cultures.
A book, Surveying Cultures reviewed cross-cultural research
on impression-formation processes, and provided guidelines for conducting impression-formation studies in cultures where the processes are unexplored currently.
Social psychology (sociology)
Social psychology , known as sociological social psychology, and sometimes as psychological sociology, is an area of sociology that focuses on social actions and on interrelations of personality, values, and mind with social structure and culture...
refers to combining simultaneous experiences into emergent states that relate complexly to the sources. Research focuses mainly on impressions of individuals involved in social actions
Social actions
In sociology, social action refers to an act which takes into account the actions and reactions of individuals .According to Max Weber, "an Action is 'social' if the acting individual takes account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course" .- Social action and Max Weber :The...
. However, studies also deal with impressions of an individual occupying an identity who simultaneously displays a status characteristic, psychological trait, mood, or emotion.
Foundations
In psychology Fritz HeiderFritz Heider
Fritz Heider was an Austrian psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school. In 1958 he published The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, which expanded upon his creation of balance theory and marked the starting point of attribution theory...
's writings on balance theory
Balance theory
Balance Theory is a motivational theory of attitude change proposed by Fritz Heider, which conceptualizes the consistency motive as a drive toward psychological balance...
emphasized that liking or disliking a person depends on how the person is positively or negatively linked to other liked or disliked entities. Heider's later essay on social cognition
Social cognition
Social cognition is the encoding, storage, retrieval, and processing, in the brain, of information relating to conspecifics, or members of the same species. At one time social cognition referred specifically to an approach to social psychology in which these processes were studied according to the...
, along with the development of "psycho-logic" by Robert P. Abelson
Robert P. Abelson
Robert Paul Abelson was a Yale University psychologist and political scientist with special interests in statistics and logic....
and Milton J. Rosenberg, embedded evaluative processes in verbal descriptions of actions, with the verb of a descriptive sentence establishing the kind of linkage existing between the actor and object of the sentence. Harry Gollob expanded these insights with his subject-verb-object approach to social cognition, and he showed that evaluations of sentence subjects could be calculated with high precision from out-of-context evaluations of the subject, verb, and object, with part of the evaluative outcome coming from multiplicative interactions
Interaction (statistics)
In statistics, an interaction may arise when considering the relationship among three or more variables, and describes a situation in which the simultaneous influence of two variables on a third is not additive...
among the input evaluations. In a later work, Gollob and Betty Rossman extended the framework to predicting an actor's power and influence. Reid Hastie wrote that "Gollob's extension of the balance model to inferences concerning subject-verb-object sentences is the most important methodological and theoretical development of Heider's principle since its original statement."
Gollob's regression
Regression analysis
In statistics, regression analysis includes many techniques for modeling and analyzing several variables, when the focus is on the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables...
equations for predicting impressions of sentence subjects consisted of weighted summations of out-of-context ratings of the subject, verb, and object, and of multiplicative interactions of the ratings. The equations essentially supported the cognitive algebra
Algebra
Algebra is the branch of mathematics concerning the study of the rules of operations and relations, and the constructions and concepts arising from them, including terms, polynomials, equations and algebraic structures...
approach of Norman H. Anderson
Norman H. Anderson
Norman Henry Anderson is a social psychologist, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, where he was one of three founders of the Department of Psychology...
's Information Integration Theory
Information Integration Theory
Information integration theory was proposed by Norman H. Anderson to describe and model how a person integrates information from a number of sources in to make an overall judgment. The theory proposes three functions....
. Anderson, however, initiated a heated technical exchange between himself and Gollob, in which Anderson argued that Gollob's use of the general linear model
General linear model
The general linear model is a statistical linear model.It may be written aswhere Y is a matrix with series of multivariate measurements, X is a matrix that might be a design matrix, B is a matrix containing parameters that are usually to be estimated and U is a matrix containing errors or...
led to indeterminate theory because it could not completely account for any particular case in the set of cases used to estimate the models. The recondite exchange typified a continuing debate between proponents of contextualism
Contextualism
Contextualism describes a collection of views in philosophy which emphasize the context in which an action, utterance, or expression occurs, and argues that, in some important respect, the action, utterance, or expression can only be understood relative to that context...
who argue that impressions result from situationally specific influences (e.g., from semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
and nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication is usually understood as the process of communication through sending and receiving wordless messages. Messages can be communicated through gestures and touch , by body language or posture, by facial expression and eye contact...
as well as affective
Affective science
Affective science is the scientific study of emotion or affect. This includes the study of emotion elicitation, emotional experience and the recognition of emotions in others...
factors), and modelers who follow the pragmatic maxim
Pragmatic maxim
The pragmatic maxim, also known as the maxim of pragmatism or the maxim of pragmaticism, is a maxim of logic formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce...
, seeking approximation
Approximation
An approximation is a representation of something that is not exact, but still close enough to be useful. Although approximation is most often applied to numbers, it is also frequently applied to such things as mathematical functions, shapes, and physical laws.Approximations may be used because...
s revealing core mental processes. Another issue in using least-squares estimations is the compounding of measurement error
Observational error
Observational error is the difference between a measured value of quantity and its true value. In statistics, an error is not a "mistake". Variability is an inherent part of things being measured and of the measurement process.-Science and experiments:...
problems with multiplicative variables.
In sociology David R. Heise
David R. Heise
David Reuben Jerome Heise is a social psychologist who originated the idea that affectual processes control interpersonal behavior. Additionally he contributes to both quantitative and qualitative methodology in sociology...
relabeled Gollob's framework from subject-verb-object to actor-behavior-object in order to allow for impression formation from perceived events as well as from verbal stimuli, and showed that actions produce impressions of behaviors and objects as well as of actors on all three dimensions of Charles E. Osgood
Charles E. Osgood
Charles Egerton Osgood was a distinguished American psychologist who developed a technique for measuring the connotative meaning of concepts, known as the semantic differential.-Career:...
's semantic differential
Semantic differential
Semantic differential is a type of a rating scale designed to measure the connotative meaning of objects, events, and concepts. The connotations are used to derive the attitude towards the given object, event or concept.-Semantic differential:...
—Evaluation, Potency, and Activity. Heise used equations describing impression-formation processes as the empirical basis for his cybernetic theory of action, Affect Control Theory
Affect control theory
In control theory affect control theory proposes that individuals maintain affective meanings through their actions and interpretations of events...
.
Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman
Erving Goffman was a Canadian-born sociologist and writer.The 73rd president of American Sociological Association, Goffman's greatest contribution to social theory is his study of symbolic interaction in the form of dramaturgical perspective that began with his 1959 book The Presentation of Self...
's book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a seminal sociology book by Erving Goffman. It uses the imagery of the theatre in order to portray the importance of human – namely, social – action. The book was published in 1959. See dramaturgy for a detailed analysis.-Summary:In the center of the...
and his essay "On Face-work" in the book Interaction Ritual focused on how individuals engage in impression management
Impression management
In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event; they do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction...
. Using the notion of face as identity
Identity (social science)
Identity is a term used to describe a person's conception and expression of their individuality or group affiliations . The term is used more specifically in psychology and sociology, and is given a great deal of attention in social psychology...
is used now, Goffman proposed that individuals maintain face expressively. "By entering a situation in which he is given a face to maintain, a person takes on the responsibility of standing guard over the flow of events as they pass before him. He must ensure that a particular expressive order is sustained-an order that regulates the flow of events, large or small, so that anything that appears to be expressed by them will be consistent with his face." In other words, individuals control events so as to create desired impressions of themselves. Goffman emphasized that individuals in a group operate as a team
Team
A team comprises a group of people or animals linked in a common purpose. Teams are especially appropriate for conducting tasks that are high in complexity and have many interdependent subtasks.A group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team...
with everyone committed to helping others maintain their identities.
Impression-formation processes in the US
Ratings of 515 action descriptions by American respondents yielded estimations of a statistical modelStatistical model
A statistical model is a formalization of relationships between variables in the form of mathematical equations. A statistical model describes how one or more random variables are related to one or more random variables. The model is statistical as the variables are not deterministically but...
consisting of nine impression-formation equations, predicting outcome Evaluation, Potency, and Activity of actor, behavior, and object from pre-event ratings of the evaluation, potency, and activity of actor, behavior, and object.
Stability was a factor in every equation, with some pre-action feeling toward an action element transferred to post-action feeling about the same element. Evaluation, Potency, and Activity of behaviors suffused to actors so impressions of actors were determined in part by the behaviors they performed. In general objects of action lost Potency.
Interactions among variables included consistency effects, such as receiving Evaluative credit for performing a bad behavior toward a bad object person, and congruency effects, such as receiving evaluative credit for nice behaviors toward weak objects or bad behaviors toward powerful objects. Third-order interactions included a balance effect in which actors received a boost in evaluation if two or none of the elements in the action were negative, otherwise a decrement. Across all nine prediction equations, more than half of the 64 possible predictors (first-order variables plus second- and third-order interactions) contributed to outcomes.
Studies of event descriptions that explicitly specified behavior settings
Behavior settings
Behavior settings are theorized entities that help explain the relationship between individuals and the environment - particularly the social environment. This topic is typically indexed under the larger rubric of 'Ecological Psychology'...
found that impression-formation processes are largely the same when settings are salient, but the setting becomes an additional contributor to impression formation regarding actor, behavior, and object; and the action changes the impression of the setting.
Actor and object are the same person in self-directed actions such as the "The lawyer praised himself" or various kinds of self-harm
Self-harm
Self-harm or deliberate self-harm includes self-injury and self-poisoning and is defined as the intentional, direct injuring of body tissue most often done without suicidal intentions. These terms are used in the more recent literature in an attempt to reach a more neutral terminology...
. Impression-formation research indicates that self-directed actions reduce the positivity of actors on the Evaluation, Potency, and Activity dimensions. Self-directed actions therefore are not an optimal way to confirm the good, potent, lively identities that people normally want to maintain. Rather self-directed actions are a likely mode of expression for individuals who want to manifest their low self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
and self-efficacy
Self-efficacy
Self-efficacy is a term used in psychology, roughly corresponding to a person's belief in their own competence.It has been defined as the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain set of goals. It is believed that our personalized ideas of self-efficacy affect...
.
Early work on impression formation used action sentences like, "The kind man praises communists," and "Bill helped the corrupt senator," assuming that modifier-noun combinations amalgamate into a functional unit. A later study found that a modifier-noun combination does form an overall impression that works in action descriptions like a noun alone. The action sentences in that study combined identities with status characteristics, traits
Trait theory
In psychology, Trait theory is a major approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over...
, moods
Mood (psychology)
A mood is a relatively long lasting emotional state. Moods differ from emotions in that they are less specific, less intense, and less likely to be triggered by a particular stimulus or event....
, and emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
s. Another study focused specifically on emotion descriptors combined with identities (e.g., an angry child) and again found that emotion terms amalgamate with identities, and equations describing this kind of amalgamation are of the same form as equations describing trait-identity amalgamation.
Cross-cultural Studies
Studies of various kinds of impression formation have been conducted in Canada, Japan, and Germany. Core processes are similar cross-culturally. For example, in every culture that has been studied, Evaluation of an actor was determined by-among other things-a stability effect, a suffusion from the behavior Evaluation, and an interaction that rewarded an actor for performing a behavior whose Evaluation was consistent with the Evaluation of the object person.On the other hand, each culture weighted the core effects distinctively. For example, the impact of behavior-object Evaluation consistency was much smaller in Germany than in the U.S.A., Canada, or Japan, suggesting that moral
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
judgments of actors have a somewhat different basis in Germany than in the other cultures. Additionally, impression-formation processes involved some unique interactions in each culture. For example, attribute-identity amalgamations in Germany involved some Potency and Activity interactions that did not appear in other cultures.
A book, Surveying Cultures reviewed cross-cultural research
Cross-cultural studies
Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called Holocultural Studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences that uses field data from many societies to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human behavior and culture. Cross-cultural studies is the third form of...
on impression-formation processes, and provided guidelines for conducting impression-formation studies in cultures where the processes are unexplored currently.