Forming First Impressions

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For an example, you saw your classmate sharing answers during an exam. How will you interpret it? Is it helpfulness or dishonesty?

If you are someone whose ideas about helpfulness are highly accessible then you may think that it is a helpful act. But it may be different for others, let say you are an instructor and you know that sharing answers during an exam is cheating and it is more accessible to you then you may think it is dishonesty.

Factors that influence accessibility of knowledge are concurrent activation by other sources and recent and past activation.

CONCURRENT ACTIVATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Mood and expectations influence our interpretations of cues. General positive and negative information may be made access by our current moods. For an example, if you are happy you will see people positively. But if you are in a bad mood, you’re more likely to see negatively and you are going to think that you whole day will be bad also.

Our expectations also act as accessible knowledge that powerfully influence our interpretations of behaviors. If we expect that a person is a kind person, we are more likely to see the positive sides of him. But when we expect that this person is narcissistic then we are more likely to see how self-absorb he is.

ACCESSIBILTY FROM FREQUENT ACTIVATION: CHRONIC ACCESSIBILITY

The frequent use of cognitive representations over days, months and years can make it chronically accessible. This means you can access this right away because it’s one of your top knowledge.

ACCESSIBILITY FROM RECENT ACTIVATION

There is research about the effect of recent activation influence our interpretation of behavior, Tory Higgins and his colleagues asked students to memorize some words related to the positive trait “adventurous” while another group memorize related words to a negative trait “reckless”. Then they read a description about Donald who climbed Mount McKinley, gone white-kayaking and driven a demolition derby. And then they asked the students about Donald’s activity, the group with adventurous words describe him as a daring and cool person. While the students with reckless words saw Donald’s as rash and reckless.

With that said, words that we recently activated remains accessible for a time.

ACCESSIBILITY AND SEXISM IN A JOB INTERVIEW

CHARACTERIZING THE BEHAVING PERSON: CORRESPONDENT INFERENCES

Characterizing someone as having a personality trait that corresponds to his or her behavior is called correspondent inference. It completes first impressions.