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impression formation
The first attribute you notice determines your entire assessment.
The 'primacy effect' in social judgment dictates that initial impressions weight more heavily than subsequent information.
When participants in a 1946 study were given a list of adjectives to describe a person, the same list yielded vastly different impressions depending on whether 'intelligent' or 'envious' was listed first. Later information is filtered through the initial impression.
Your brain decides who someone is before you finish meeting them.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Asch, 1946, The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
- What the check found
- Asch's 1946 study is a well-established foundational work that demonstrated the primacy effect in impression formation.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.