First Impressions

Theories of impression formation 

• Forming first impressions is adaptive. We overgeneralise from particularly adaptive impressions. Perceivers and targets drive impressions

What judgements we make 

• We form impressions of: emotions, attractiveness, health, personality, group memberships

Accuracy 

• Realistic accuracy model. Social accuracy model. Accuracy depends on perceiver, target, and attribute/judgment

Consistency of impressions 

• First impressions last and can update

Consequences 

•  First impressions affect: interactions, predictions of success, voting, hiring, criminal sentencing

Overall summary

• First impressions are rapid, formed from a variety of channels. We form impressions of both states (emotion) and stable traits (e.g., personality, group memberships). We show accuracy in many but not all of our impressions. First impressions tend to stick, but can be updated. These impressions can have substantial downstream consequences

• History: physiognomy, appears throughout history 
• Ecological theory of social perception (Gibson, 1979; McArthur & Baron, 1983):
  • Perception serves an adaptive function
  • Events (dynamic information) particularly informative
  • Perceive useful information 
  • Perception depends on what perceivers attends to 
• Adaptive to extract relevant social information from environment 
• Overgeneralisation hypothesis (Zebrowitx, 2017; Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008)
• Social relations model (Kenny, 1994; Hehman et al., 2017)
  • Targets x perceivers 
  • Different patterns depending on attribute being judged 

• Sources of first impressions: behaviour, (facial) appearance, speech, spaces 
• Emotions 
  • Facial appearance (facial expressions) - Adolphs (2006), Ekman & Friesen (1971), Elfenbein & Ambady (2002)
  • Speech (tone) - Rosenthal et al., (1979) 
  • Behaviour (Rosenthal et al., 1979)
• Attractiveness
  • Facial & bodily appearance - consensus (e.g. symmetry), idiosyncrasy (e.g. masculinity/femininity preferences) - Perrett (2010), Ritchie et al., (2017)
• Health 
  • Facial appearance (skin colouration, weight, symmetry) - Stephen et al., (2009; 11), Coetzee et al., (2009), Rhodes et al., (2001)
• Personality: trustworthiness & dominance 
  • Facial appearance (emotion/valence), (facial maturity/width-to-height ratio)
  • Speech (pitch) 
  • Accuracy? Not for trustworthiness, dominance - predicting aggression 
• Personality: Big 5
  • Behaviour: brief-in person interactions (extraversion, conscientiousness), thin slices: (extraversion, conscientiousness), zero acquaintance (extraversion)
  • Appearance: full body photos (extraversion), face photos (extraversion)
  • Spaces: offices (openness, extraversion, conscientiousness), bedrooms (all Big 5, especially openness), Facebook profiles (openness, conscientiousness) 
  • Speech (extraversion)
• Group membership 
  • Perceptually obvious: gender, race, age 
  • Perceptually ambiguous: sexual orientation, political affiliation, social class, culture 
  • Sexual orientation: speech (cues unclear), behaviour (e.g. gender typicality in gait), facial appearance (gender typicality, men's emotion) 
  • Political affiliation: facial appearance (emotion in official photos) 
  • Social class: behaviour (engagement in an interaction), facial appearance (attractiveness/health, emotion)
  • Social class: speech (accent) 
  • Culture: facial appearance ('nonverbal' accents in emotion, self-presentation), speech (accent) 

• Predicting accuracy: Realistic Accuracy Model, Social Accuracy Model 
• RAM: relevant signal, available to perceiver, detected by perceiver, utilised correctly (Funder, 1995; 2012)
• SAM: perceptive accuracy, expressive accuracy, within each (normative accuracy, distinctive accuracy) (Biesanz, 2010)
• Who makes accurate judgements?
  • Variations in interpersonal accuracy
  • More accurate perceivers: ingroup members, women, lower social class/SES (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Hall et al., 2016; Dietze & Knowles, 2020)
  • But depends on legibility of target (Rogers & Biesanz, 2019)
• Who is judged accurately?
  • Some people are more legible than others: psychological adjustment, social status, socialisation (Human & Biesanz, 2013)
• What is judged accurately? (Krzyzaniak & Letzring, 2019)
  • Some aspects are judged accurately, others are not 
  • Presence of relevant signal varies (as does its availability to perceivers) 

• First impression last 
• Why might first impressions persist?
  • Selective attention, selective memory, self-fulfilling prophecy, experience sampling bias 
• Resistance of negative impressions to change (Denrell, 2005)
  • Experience sampling bias, but increased exposure leads to increased likelihood of change 
• Consistent impressions across social media profile or in-person interaction (Weisbuch, Ivcevic & Ambady, 2009)
  • Liking: social expressivity 
• Consistent impressions across photo & later in-person interaction (Gunaydin, Secuk & Zayas, 2017)
  • Behavioural confirmation, halo effect 
• First impressions can update 
• More information can update our first impressions (Satchell, 2019)
  • Consistency in photo/interaction impressions, but - increased accuracy for some impressions after interaction, and - impressions more positive after interaction 
• Implicit first impressions (Mann & Ferguson, 2015; Ferguson et al., 2019)
  • Reinterpretation of information = updated impression 

• First impressions inform our interactions (Harris & Garris, 2008)
• Accuracy -> better interactions (Schmid Mast & Hall, 2018)
• Predicting success (Ambady & Rosenthal, 1993; Rule & Ambady, 2008; 2011)
  • Teacher evaluations 
  • Lawyer & CEO success 
• Voting (Todorov et al., 2005; Rule et al., 2010)
  • Perceived competence = votes (Western culture)
  • Perceived warmth = votes (East Asian culture)
• Hiring 
  • Attractiveness - halo effect (Hosoda et al., 2003)
  • Sexual orientation - perceived 'fit' (Rule et al., 2016)
  • Social class - perceived competence & 'fit' (Rivera & Tilcsik, 2016)
• Criminal sentencing 
  • Trustworthiness impressions - death vs life sentence (Wilson & Rule, 2015)
  • Afrocentric features: stereotyping = harsher sentences (Blair et al., 2004; Eberhardt et al., 2006) 
• Overcoming the power of first impressions? 
  • Information about biased first impressions based on faces (no change in effect of perceived trustworthiness on sentencing decision) 
  • Learning trust behaviours associated with particular individuals' faces (overcomes facial trustworthiness in predicting economic game decisions)