Lecture 5 / Impressions

Social Impression

A person's initial perception, judgment, or mental image of another person, often formed immediately based on direct encounters, physical cues, and behavioral traits .

Evolutionary Necessity of Impressions

The need to rapidly evaluate safety, trustworthiness, and social compatibility within milliseconds to act as an anchor for future interactions .

Attractiveness Bias

The expectation that highly attractive people are more interesting, warm, outgoing, and socially skilled than less attractive people .

Gender-Specific Competence Effect

The assessment of an individual's skill and effectiveness influenced by societal stereotypes rather than actual performance .

Baby Face Syndrome

Physical features like a round face and smaller eyes that lead to perceptions of kindness, honesty, and warmth .

Trait Conclusions from Faces

Rapid judgments made about specific traits like competence or threat level based on facial features (e.g., Khamenei or Trump) .

Nonverbal Liking Cues

Behaviors such as orienting the body directly toward someone, leaning in, and nodding while they speak .

Dilated Pupils

A physiological nonverbal sign indicating interest and focused attention .

Human Lie Detection Accuracy

The general accuracy rate is around 50 percent, with people relying on cues from faces, words, voice, and limbs .

Polygraph Error Rates

A tool that has a 75% correct hit rate but a high 40% false alarm rate .

Mere Exposure Effect

The psychological phenomenon where people develop a preference for things or people simply because they are familiar with them .

Implicit Personality Theories

Mental "if/then" rules used to build complex impressions, such as assuming a kind person is also smart .

The Halo Effect

A cognitive bias where one positive trait, such as beauty, creates an effect that makes the person seem perfect in all other areas .

Trait Linking

The process where behaviors demonstrating the same trait are "clumped" together in memory .

Valence Clusters

The brain's method of storing positive and negative traits in separate mental "folders" .

The Impression Package

The combination of traits into a single mental representation where negativity usually counts more than positivity .

Motive for Connectedness

The drive to assume positive qualities about collaborators to seek better social support .

Motivation for Accuracy

Trying harder to be "right" about someone when needing them for a goal or when needing to explain your reasoning to others

Superficial Information Processing

Unmotivated and automatic processing that relies on accessibility (what is easy) rather than logic .

Systematic Information Processing

A high-energy mode of thinking triggered by unexpected situations or threatened goals, linked to the "Mastery" motivation .

Asch's Impression Theory

The idea that we fit information into a whole image where elements influence each other's meaning .

Cognitive Conservatism

The tendency to defend formed mental representations because we do not want to change them and they serve a purpose .

The Primacy Effect

A cognitive bias where the first items or traits learned in a sequence disproportionately influence decisions and memory .

Perseverance Bias

The tendency to stubbornly hold onto a belief even when strong counter-evidence shows it is false .

Olivia Benson Example (Perseverance)

A situation where one remains convinced of guilt or suspiciousness even after DNA evidence clears a suspect .

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

A concept coined by Robert Merton where a false belief causes behavior that makes that expectation come true.

Limits on Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Factors that stop the cycle, such as a target's strong self-concept or their awareness of the perceiver's expectations .

Strategic Attribution

A method of dealing with inconsistent information by ignoring, forgetting, or explaining away negative traits (e.g., justifying a leader's faults) .

Reconciling Inconsistencies

The process of spending extra time and mental energy trying to explain unexpected behaviors compared to expected ones .

Cultural Differences in Social Context

The tendency for collectivists to be more likely than individualists to view behavior as changing with circumstances and social context