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

Stereotyping is when we form rigid, generalised and simplified sets of ideas about others. (I.e. Chinese are ambitious, Russians like their vodka, black people are good athletes, etc) By stereotyping, we infer that all members of the group have similiar characteristics and abilities. Stereotypes can be based on any number of things- religion, gender, sexual orientatian, race, accent, political ideals, etc etc. The list goes on near ad infinitum.

D. Katz and K. Braly (1933)

Students in America were asked for their stereotypes of ethnic groups, and is more than 75% agreed on a personality trait, this was considered a part of a stereotype. However, similiar research 20 or so years later indicated that stereotypes had changed, and students were more uncomfortable about being asked to make such generalisations.

G. Razran (1950)

To avoid making questions obvious, and so to avoid participants giving socially desirable/politically correct answers, Razran asked people to rate pictures of girls on psychological aspects, instead of directly declaring the purpose of his research. Later, they were asked to rate the same pictures, but different names were attached. (This time, the names given were of ethnicities, I.e Irish, Italian or Jewish-sounding names.) When compared to the original responses, there were differences. For example, the girls later given Jewish-sounding names were rated higher on intelligence and ambition the second time as compared to the first, but by the same token, were rated lower on niceness.

Razran's conclusion from this was that the judgments made by the participants were affected by their stereotype of a particular ethnic group.

Jeffrey Rubin (1977)

Rubin investigated how new parents stereotype their children. It was found that parents expect gender differences, as within 24 hours of birth, girls were considered softer and smaller, whilst boys were considered more alert, and better coordinated. In reality, there was little physical difference between the babies. In addition, fathers tended to see more of a difference than mothers did, implying that they are more open to gender stereotypes than females are.

This research shows that parents already stereotype their infants before any stereotypical behavious is evident.

M. Snyder and S. Uranowitz (1978)

This study highlights the effect that stereotypes can have on our impressions of others. participants were told information about a fictional character- I.e. during high school, she never had a steady boyfriend, but went on lots of dates. Later, some were told she married happily, whilst others were told that she later revealed herself to be a lesbian.

At a later date, when asked to recall information about this character, people more easily remembered information that conformed to their stereotype. For example, those told she adopted a lesbian lifestyle remembered that she never had a steady boyfriend more easily than other facts, whilst those told she married happily remembered that she dated lots most easily.

The conclusion reached by this was that stereotypes distort impressions, and lead us to view people more as members of a group, instead of responding to them as individuals.

John Williams and Deborah Best (1994)

In this study, people from different cultures were asked about male and female characteristics. The result was shown that men were universally considered to be more aggressive and determined, whilst women were considered to be more emotional and cautious. These stereotypical characteristics have also been summarised as "hard" and "soft".

In conclusion:

research using artificial groups does not neccessarily reflect real life, where membership of groups has meaning to individuals. In addition, there can be peopel belonging to many different, overlapping groups.

Research of this nature also focuses on generalisations, and what is considered to be typical. As such, it is possible that this emphasis increased the amoutn of generalisation that became evident in the results recieved.

Participants are also prone to give answers they think may be socially desirable, or politically correct, instead of actually saying what they think/believe.