Forming Impressions of Personality – An Essential or Detrimental Process? An Overview of Research Reports and Practical Implications
Abstract
Research Objective: The aim of this article is to refer novel research on impression formation and halo effect outcomes to the classical series of experiments conducted by Solomon Asch in 1946. In Asch’s article presenting these experiments several theories and ideas are outlined and they are cited and broadened today by social cognition psychologists.
The Research Problem and Methods: The article provides a critical overview of scientific research concerning the process of impression formation. The analysis of these research outcomes enabled to show Solomon Asch’s theories in an updated light.
The Process of Argumentation: In the first part of this paper an influence of central features, mainly “warmth” and “coldness” is being discussed. In the second part outer factors, such as the sequence of learning the features, affective influences and the length of acquaintance with an evaluated person are being discussed in the context of forming an impression of a person. In the third part the phenomenon of the relativity of the attributes’ sense depending on co-existing features is being described.
Research Results: Experiments presented in the paper confirm Asch’s observations and support the thesis that the general impression influences the perception of particular features of a person. People are not aware of the existence of this phenomenon.
Conclusions, Innovations and Recommendations: The outcomes of research discussed in the paper have several practical implications for people evaluating by profession, such as teachers, recruiters or jurors and for the people who are being evaluated. They should be aware of the distortions made by automatic impression formation concerning personality or competences of other people and they ought to realize that surrendering to such an automatic mechanism can make an evaluator responsible for the fate of the evaluated person in context of their school or professional career.References
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