Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences.

Zajonc, Robert B.

doi:10.1037/0003-066x.35.2.151

Cited by 6,594 publications

(3,980 citation statements)

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“…For example, the model predicts a positive correlation of impression valence with the number of samples from a target. Any social psychologist would likely attribute this finding to mere exposure processes (Zajonc, 1980). However, the process of exposure-induced familiarity producing liking is not in the model; the correlation arises in the model through a completely different mechanism (valence-dependent sampling).…”

Section: Overview Of Multiagent Model Results and Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualizing person perception: Distributed social cognition.

Smith

Collins

2009

Psychological Review

120

115

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Research on person perception typically emphasizes cognitive processes of information selection and interpretation within the individual perceiver and the nature of the resulting mental representations. The authors focus instead on the ways person perception processes create, and are influenced by, the patterns of impressions that are socially constructed, transmitted, and filtered through social networks. As the socially situated cognition perspective (E. R. Smith & G. R. Semin, 2004) suggests, it is necessary to supplement consideration of intra-individual cognitive processes with an examination of the social context. The authors describe a theoretical model of processes of distributed social cognition that takes account of 3 levels: the individual perceiver, the interacting dyad, and the social network in which they are embedded. The authors' model assumes that perceivers elicit or create as well as interpret impressionrelevant information in dyadic interaction and that perceivers obtain information from 3rd-party sources who are linked to perceivers and targets in social networks. The authors also present results of a multiagent simulation of a subset of these processes. Implications of the theoretical model are discussed, for the possibility of correcting biases in person perception and for the nature of underlying mental representations of persons.Keywords: person perception, gossip, social networks, multiagent People's impressions or mental representations of others are fundamental tools for social life. Whether they are valid or invalid, based on years of acquaintanceship or just a cursory glance, our impressions of other people shape our choices of romantic partners, our judgments about political candidates or job applicants, our detection and sanctioning of cheaters and norm violators, and our daily interactions with colleagues, friends, and family.Motivated by the fundamental importance of person perception, researchers have intensively studied how individual perceivers select, interpret, and integrate information about other people. We know a good deal, for instance, about the types of cues social perceivers notice and integrate into their impressions, the conditions under which they automatically access their existing knowledge structures (such as stereotypes), and the ways they use their impressions to make judgments and decisions about other people (Gilbert, 1998;E. R. Smith, 1998). Rigorously controlled laboratory studies have given a clear picture of the nature, time course, and effects of these and other subprocesses of impression formation.However, as advocates of the "situated cognition" approach have argued, even a detailed understanding of the properties of isolated psychological processes cannot fully account for the ways the processes actually operate in concrete social contexts (Robbins & Aydede, 2008;E. R. Smith & Semin, 2004). When people act and interact with other individuals and groups, additional processes often become relevant, and psychological processes are often "scaffolded" b...

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Section: Overview Of Multiagent Model Results and Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualizing person perception: Distributed social cognition.

Smith

Collins

2009

Psychological Review

120

115

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“…Because this bias is independent of accurate performance (Snodgrass & Corwin, 1988, p. 47), as confirmed by our correlational analyses, we think that this phenomenon demonstrates semantic activation in the absence of (conscious) stimulus identification in both hemispheres (cf. Greenwald et al, 1996;Holender, 1986;Windmann & Krüger, 1998;Zajonc, 1980). When presented in a nonoverlearned perceptual format, stimuli evaluated as potentially negative during this early processing are then lexically analyzed equally well by both hemispheres (as indicated by the symmetric P r values for negative items), whereas items without this emotional connotation are analyzed more accurately by the verbally skilled left hemisphere than by the right hemisphere.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The former would suggest that hemispheric asymmetries in emotion perception emerge only at a stage at which discriminative object recognition is performed, whereas the latter would suggest that they might exist already at an early, perhaps unconscious stage of processing (cf. Anderson & Phelps, 2001;Zajonc, 1980). With regard to lexical stimuli, this possibility may be considered unlikely because language has developed only recently in human evolution, hence it could be argued that both hemispheres may be unable to extract the semantics of language without prior lexical analysis (White, 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociating Prelexical and Postlexical Processing of Affective Information in the Two Hemispheres: Effects of the Stimulus Presentation Format

2002

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Using a lexical decision task, the authors investigated whether brain asymmetries in the detection of emotionally negative semantic associations arise only at a perceptually discriminative stage at which lexical analysis is accurate or can already be found at crude and incomplete levels of perceptual representation at which word-nonword discrimination is based solely on guessing. Emotionally negative and neutral items were presented near perceptual threshold in the left and right visual hemifields. Word-nonword discrimination performance as well as the bias to classify a stimulus as a ''word'' (whether or not it actually is a word) were assessed for a normal, horizontal stimulus presentation format (Experiment 1) and for an unusual, vertical presentation format (Experiment 2). Results show that while the two hemispheres are equally able to detect affective semantic associations at a prelexical processing stage (both experiments), the right hemisphere is superior at a postlexical, perceptually discriminative stage (Experiment 2). Moreover, the findings suggest that only an unusual, nonoverlearned stimulus presentation format allows adequate assessment of the right hemisphere's lexical-semantic skills. © 2002 Elsevier Science (USA)

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“…First impressions are affective in nature, can be formed on the basis of little to no information, guide cognitions and perceptions of risks and benefits, and tend to be difficult to change (Finucane et al, 2000;Zajonc, 1980). Evidence for the perseverance of first impressions comes from three lines of psychological research in which undergraduate participants made hypothetical decisions in carefully controlled experiments.…”

Section: The Role Of Initial Affective Impressions In Responses To Edmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of initial affective impressions in responses to educational communications: The case of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

Bruin¹,

Wong‐Parodi²

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied

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Emerging technologies promise potential benefits at a potential cost. Developers of educational communications aim to improve people's understanding and to facilitate public debate.However, even relatively uninformed recipients may have initial feelings that are difficult to change. We report that people's initial affective impressions about Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), a low-carbon coal-based electricity-generation technology with which most people are unfamiliar, influences how they interpret previously validated education materials. As a result, even individuals who had originally self-identified as uninformed persisted in their initial feelings after reading the educational communication --though perseverance of feelings about CCS was stronger among recipients who had originally self-identified as relatively informed (Study 1). Moreover, uninformed recipients whose initial feelings were experimentally manipulated by relatively uninformative pro-CCS or anti-CCS arguments persisted in their New technological developments bring the promise of societal benefits while introducing potential risks. Members of a democratic society face public debates about whether or not to support the implementation of specific technologies. Well-meaning educators may aim to facilitate those public debates by informing people's perceptions through educational communications. Here, we refer to "educational communications" when describing materials that have been designed to provide balanced and accurate information, and that have been tested for their ability to improve people's understanding of the topic under consideration (see for example Fischhoff, Brewer, & Downs, 2011;Morgan, Fischhoff, Bostrom, & Atman, 2002).Yet, it may be difficult to change recipients' feelings about CCS once they have already formed initial impressions, even if they may still have limited knowledge. First impressions are affective in nature, can be formed on the basis of little to no information, guide cognitions and perceptions of risks and benefits, and tend to be difficult to change (Finucane et al., 2000;Zajonc, 1980). Evidence for the perseverance of first impressions comes from three lines of psychological research in which undergraduate participants made hypothetical decisions in carefully controlled experiments. First, research on impression formation has shown a primacy effect, such that people described as intelligent, tall and mean are evaluated more positively than those described as mean, tall, and intelligent (Asch, 1961; for exceptions see Hogarth & Einhorn, 1992). Second, feelings that are evoked by positive or negative performance feedback tend to linger, even after it is disclosed that the feedback has been fabricated (Anderson et al., 1980). Third, psychological experiments have found that false impressions about hypothetical products RUNNING HEAD: Role of initial affective impressions in responses to communications 4 are difficult to change, because participants feel that the original claims are more likely to ring t...

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Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences.

Cited by 6,594 publications

References 125 publications

Contextualizing person perception: Distributed social cognition.

Contextualizing person perception: Distributed social cognition.

Dissociating Prelexical and Postlexical Processing of Affective Information in the Two Hemispheres: Effects of the Stimulus Presentation Format

The role of initial affective impressions in responses to educational communications: The case of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS).

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