Forming Impressions

Central and Peripheral Traits

Primacy and Recency Effects

Implicit Personality Theories (Including personal constructs, the halo effect, and the effect of names)

Stereotyping

Social Categorisation

Pros/Cons Of Stereotyping

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Solomon Asch (1946)

Generally, it has been shown that some information we acquire about people is considered more important than other information. Asch refered to this important information as "central traits", whilst the less important information is refered to as "peripheral traits".

In his studies, Asch took two groups of participants. Each was given a list of traits (intelligent, skilful, industrious, determind, practical, cautious) and one other. The last trait was "warm", for one group, and for the other, "cold".

These groups were then given a list of other traits (reliable, good-natured, etc) and asked to choose which ones the person would have.

The results showed a very strong correlation between being given the word "warm", and attributing this fictional person with more favourable characteristics.

The same study was repeated, with different variable words. In this study, the words Warm/Cold were replaced with "Polite" or "Blunt". This study found very little difference between the responses generated in each group.

Asch's conclusion from these results that certain traits are central to the impression we have of people, because they influence our perception of other, peripheral, traits. (I.e. the words in the first study were deemed as central traits, hence why they made a difference, whilst those used in the second study were peripheral traits, hence making much less of a difference.)

Harold Kelley (1950)

Harold Kelly did a study very similar to the first by Asch, except instead of using a fictional character, which was one of the main criticisms of Asch's research, he integrated it into a real life situation.

In Kelly's studies, there were two groups of students as participants. Each was told they would be taught a lesson by a new tutor. The teacher was described to the first group as "rather warm", and to the second group as "rather cold". The two groups were combined, and all had one and the same lesson with the same teacher.

The results of this were that those who had been told the teacher was "rather warm" rated the teacher more highly at the end of the lesson, and interacted more with the teacher during, whilst those who had been told the teacher was "rather cold" rated the teacher relatively poorly at the end of the lesson, and interacted less with the teacher suring the lesson.

Kelley's conclusion from this study was that warm/cold were indeed centrail traits, because on the basis of a single words difference, participants percieved, and reacted to, a person in completely different manners.

M. Rosenberg (1968)

According to Rosenberg, the trait "warm/cold" was a social trait, surrounded by intellectual traits, which led to the results that Asch recieved- not simply because warm/cold is a central trait. Instead, it was suggested that there are two major dimensions for our assesment of others- the social dimension (ie warm/cold, friendly/unfriendly, etc) and the intellectual dimension (ie smart/dumb). Central traits are any traits that relate to either of these dimensions.

Overall Conclusion:

The difference of a single word can greatly influence both our thoughts of, and our actions towards, a person. However, as humans we tend to treat people in acordance with description, which can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if we are told someone is unfriendly, we will most likely ignore them, and so in turn they will not approach us. This makes us reach the conclusion of the initial information- that the person is unfriendly. Wether or not they actually are makes little difference in such situations.