Formation of Psychological Impressions - Essay Example

Formation of psychological impressions al affiliation Psychological imperativeness implies the perception that individuals bear of other people during their first time or even subsequent encounters. In essence, psychological imperativeness is the cognitive process through which individuals form the impressions o other people. The perception is coded in the memory and forms the determinant of the nature of the future interactions and judgments. The impressions coded in the memory discriminate the characteristics of the person against personal traits. It is undeniable that the human memory is very sensitive to variations in the social environment. The ideals of psychological impressions bases on predetermined code of behavior (Chaiken, 1999). For instance, a travelling passenger quickly assesses the behavior of the bus driver or the conduct before he or she makes an informed decision to board the vehicle. The general assessment of the impressions of individuals degenerates from the physical cues that underpin the behavior. Drawing from the case of a decently dressed woman in an official dress; one may quickly scan the dressing and assume that a woman works in a formal setting. The first impression cognition primarily relies on the outward disposition of individuals without due regarded to the salience of the perceived information (Chaiken, 1999). The first step in personal impression formation is social categorization. This represents the categorization of people based on the common physical characteristics. Social categorization may occur either voluntarily or involuntarily, but often most part social categorizations occur automatically and unconsciously. The common stratification criteria for social grouping include age, gender, occupation, and race (Gilbert & Lindzey1998). Social categorization importantly enables inferring of quick judgments immediately one encounters other individuals for the first time or after a. essentially, the use of social categorization enables the formulation of expectations of the behavior of others in certain situations very quickly allowing the perceiver to focus on other better interaction dispositions. However, the potential challenge in the use of social categorization is the inherent susceptibility to prejudice and interaction barriers such as stereotyping and judgment errors. The modification to the social categorization in personality impression is the implicit personality framework in which cardinal traits are used to imply that the person in the encounter exhibits the commonly linked traits. The formation of impressions of other people, therefore, represents a form of judgment in which pre-coded traits are used to imply the disposition of other people. The formation of impression relies on the roles that individuals assume at a particular time. For instance roles such as, comedian, politician, or bull can be used to infer character traits. Generally roles are informative of a wide range of character dispositions that can be effectively used to infer personality impressions. Roles are also more distinctive than are traits leading to more associations (Gilbert & Lindzey, 1998). Roles are more important than traits in building impressions than traits are. This is because human cognition is more sensitive to the roles that individuals play on a particular situation. People tend to think of others within a role context first and only then according to personality traits. Physical cues such as individual appearance and behavior are efficient tools used to infer quality of dispositions. Furthermore, when an individual perceives an individual to belong to a particular social group, through categorization, the determination may lead to social judgments about that person that are consistent with the category-based stereotype. Categorizing someone also speeds up information-processing time. Information consistent with a stereotype is processed faster than information inconsistent with it. Whenever individuals form impressions about others without an apparent affiliation to a particular social group, he or she tends to use a piece-meal approach to impression determination. In this case, individuals examine individual pieces of information about the person and form it into an overall impression. However, affiliation of an individual to a particular social group, the impression of the individual is grossly based on the characteristics thus the individuals characteristics are subsumed into the overall group impressions. In this case, perceivers seem to prefer category-based judgments to individuated judgments. Impressions formulation ranges from stereotypical, category based on much more individualized impressions that are based on information based on particular behaviors in a distinction called dual coding and processing. The need for rapid formation of impressions involves the use of schematic, stereotypic and category based mode of inference. It is more common for individuals to quickly make category-based inference for personal impressions before processing of the individual information. When attempts to make categorization inferences fail, people resort to individualized processing of perceptions of the identity of other individuals. The impression of others is subjective to the context in which the impression is made. For instance, some perceptions are made without the biasness of the environment or situation in which such impressions are made. On the other hand, some impressions are contextually ties to the environment in which such judgments ought to be made. In essence, the tendency to infer judgments is unidirectional to the contextual standards. For instance, the presentation of an attractive person and a less attractive one both at the same time provides more favorable ratings for the less attractive individual in case the more attractive person is not around to facilitate the comparison (Reis & Judd, 2000). Assimilation of impressions with the context of the activity or encounter with an individual is common when the brain is subjected to information processing about another person at categorical or stereotypical level. Assimilation is, therefore, less likely to occur when the behavior information of the intended person is mentally thoroughly processed. The importance of context is appreciable in any form of impression formation of individuals. Context is appropriate when the perceiver tries to make inference on the characteristics of the target individual. Failure to incorporate context in perception of impressions inhibits the secondary process of constructing impressions of other people based on their dispositions in different situations. More often, impression are based on the most salient character dispositions without much regard to the in-depth characters (Reis & Judd, 2000). In essence, cognition of impression is excited by the preliminary and most visible stimuli that stand out against the most obvious impressions. For example, if a student on the first day report to class in a wheelchair, the impression is predominantly influenced by the fact that the student is disabled. Essentially, salient behaviors capture more attention and primarily form the basis of impression construction than the more subtle behaviors. It is implicit that salience influences the perceptions of casualty thus creating the impression that the most salient individuals are perceived to bear more influence over their social context (Reis & Judd, 2000). As long as immediate impressions are even minimally diagnostic, it is easier to and more advantageous to form the first impressions of people rather than to dither and deliberate. Many immediate inferences easily surpass the minimally diagnostic standard (Reis & Judd 2000).The exposure to a person for a short period produces first impressions that are often remarkably. Given this stance, it is arguable that one would defy the basic logic of evolutionary biology if he or she does not form immediate impressions of others. It is admissible, however that the inferential errors for impressions are inevitable. The impressions that people bear of the other individuals are among the most important forms of judgments humans pass on others (Kassin & Markus, 2014). We use whatever information is available to form impressions of others, to make judgments about their personalities or form hypotheses about the kinds of person they are. The psychological culmination of individual’s impression includes: i. Quick formation of impressions on the basis of minimal salient information before capitalizing on the more general ii. Attribution of special attention to the most apparent and salient characteristics of a person with minimal attention to the holistic traits and behavior i.e. (noticing the qualities that make them distinctive or unusual). iii. Making perceptions of some coherent meaning from the behavior individuals i.e. (inferring meaning from contextual behavior, rather than the behavior in isolation)  iv. Organization of perceptions by categorizing or grouping stimuli v. Using enduring cognitive structures to make sense of peoples behavior The cognitive operations leading to the series of events listed above is determined by the perceiver’s own needs and personal goals. For example, the impression the perceived forms of you form of someone he or she meets only once would be different from the impression he or she would form form about your new someone who he or she have to be with for prolonged periods of time (Kassin & Markus, 2014). Conclusion The impressions that people form of the others is based on the cognitive representations, which describe the variety of knowledge, coded and stored in the human memory. The first encounter with an individual acts as a predetermining of the nature of future interactions since the brain is very sensitive to code the most salient characteristics of the new people and the coded information in the memory forms the basic determinant of the nature of future interactions (Jowett 2007). The visible cues that are quickly coded by the human memory act as the hints that make the world and occurrences easier to understand and organize in a manner that suits human needs. There is a predetermined tendency of humans to search for patterns of behavior and categorization of information (Reis & Judd 2000). In essence, the brain structures information in the manner that makes phenomena easier to understand. Alfred Alder describes cognition of impression with regard to the psychological inclination that informs whether an individual can be beneficial in a particular course for the perceiver. Since different individuals have different aspirations, there lacks a universality of cognition since if Alder’s stance is t hold, the interpretation of cues depends on the coded cognitive information and earlier experiences that inform behaviors, traits, and social institutions. Therefore, if someone has positive earlier experiences, he or she would be inclined to construct impressions based on such positive occurrences as the standard of impressions. The fundamental facts about cognitive impressions are their effortless formation. Impressions are formed by repeated practice and over learning. However, spontaneous first impressions are deceptive and infallible since they may bear potential minimal diagnostics, which is very important in impression formation. References Chaiken, S. (1999). Dual-process theories in social psychology. New York [u.a.: Guilford Press. Gilbert, D. T., Fiske, S. T., & Lindzey, G. (1998). The handbook of social psychology. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Jowett, S. (2007). Social psychology in sport. Champaign, Ill. [u.a.: Human Kinetics. Kassin, S. M., Fein, S., & Markus, H. R. (2014). Social psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Psychology. (2009). New York: Kaplan. Reis, H. T., & Judd, C. M. (2000). Handbook of research methods in social psychology and personality psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Read More