• We relied on a model of category learning to study impression formation in context.• Perceivers form multiple impressions of the same social target depending on context.• Impressions from common contexts are learned before impressions from rare contexts.• In rare contexts, attention shifts and focuses on differentiating attributes.• Because of this learning process, impressions formed in rare contexts are stronger. The current research examined how people form context-based trait impressions and why some of these impressions are stronger than others. This research drew from principles of attention theory (Kruschke, 1996(Kruschke, , 2001) in order to account for the processes underlying impression formation in context. According to attention theory, the traits expressed by an individual target person in a rarely occurring context should be more strongly associated with that context than the traits expressed in a commonly occurring context are associated with the common context. That is, people form stronger impressions of others' behavior in rare compared to common contexts. Four experiments provide support for these predictions. The current study is one of the first to examine the cognitive mechanisms by which perceivers form trait impressions of individuals across different contexts and to explain why some of these impressions are stronger than others. Implications of the nature of these impression formation processes are discussed. a b s t r a c t a r t i c l e i n f o© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Imagine that you meet a new colleague at work. Your colleague (let us call her Mary) proves herself to be a serious worker. When meeting with her colleagues or students, Mary rarely laughs, but instead engages thoughtfully and somberly in discussion. Now imagine that Mary invites you and a few other work colleagues over to her house to have dinner. To your surprise, she seems more easy-going and relaxed with her family, frequently cracking jokes and teasing her children. Although Mary is serious at work, she is relaxed with her family. You may know many people like Mary who behave one way in one context and a different way in another context. As an observer, how do you form impressions of these people and their behaviors?As reflected in this scenario, the purpose of the current research is to examine how impressions of a person's traits are learned based on the context in which that person is encountered and how this learning process leads to different impression strengths across contexts. For example, you may form an impression of Mary as being somewhat serious at work, but you may form an impression of her as being very relaxed with her family. The current studies draw from the principles of attention theory of category learning (Kruschke, 1996(Kruschke, , 2001) in order to examine how these impression formation processes occur. According to attention theory, because impressions in rarely occurring contexts are learned after impressions in commonly occurring contexts, rare context impressions are held...

In this chapter, we describe how a simple attentional mechanism can account for a wide variety of phenomena in social perception. According to Attention Theory (Kruschke, 1996, 2003), people preferentially attend to differentiating information in order to maximize category learning. When learning multiple social categories, people attend to all features that characterize the first-learned category but shift their attention to features that uniquely distinguish a later-learned category from the first. As a result, they form a stronger impression of the later-learned social category. First, we review research on attentional processes in stereotype formation and group categorization. We show how Attention Theory can account for both category accentuation and illusory correlation in the formation of majority and minority group stereotypes. We then explain how attention shifting influences face perception and racial categorization. Second, we describe attentional processes as they relate to context-based impression formation and the influence of individual-and group-based expectancies on context-based impressions. Last, we discuss implications for impression change.

Initial evaluations generalise to new contexts, whereas counter-attitudinal evaluations are context-specific. Counter-attitudinal information may not change evaluations in new contexts because perceivers fail to retrieve counter-attitudinal cue-evaluation associations from memory outside the counter-attitudinal learning context. The current work examines whether an additional, counter-attitudinal retrieval cue can enhance the generalizability of counter-attitudinal evaluations. In four experiments, participants learned positive information about a target person, Bob, in one context, and then learned negative information about Bob in a different context. While learning the negative information, participants wore a wristband as a retrieval cue for counter-attitudinal Bob-negative associations. Participants then made speeded as well as deliberate evaluations of Bob while wearing or not wearing the wristband. Internal meta-analysis failed to find a reliable effect of the counterattitudinal retrieval cue on speeded or deliberate evaluations, whereas the context cues influenced speeded and deliberate evaluations. Counter to predictions, counter-attitudinal retrieval cues did not disrupt the generalisation of first-learned evaluations or the context-specificity of second-learned evaluations (Experiments 2-4), but the counter-attitudinal retrieval cue did influence evaluations in the absence of context cues (Experiment 1). The current work provides initial evidence that additional counter-attitudinal retrieval cues fail to disrupt the renewal and generalizability of first-learned evaluations.

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