Module 03 · Impression Formation印象形成
Tweaking Impression Formation Models印象形成模型的调整
Overview 概述
Having covered Anderson’s model of impression formation, let’s now focus on a few of the ways that people depart from this model. That is, let’s discuss descriptive models of impression formation.
涵盖安德森的印象形成模型后，现在让我们关注人们偏离这一模型的一些方式。也就是说，让我们讨论印象形成的描述性模型。
Negative Traits Are Special 负面特质是特殊的
One way in which people’s actual evaluations don’t follow information integration theory concerns how people combine positive and negative information. If you give people a list of 10 traits about a person—five positive and another five equally negative—it’s reasonable to assume that people’s overall impression of this person will be approximately neutral, with the evaluations of all of the traits averaging to near zero. However, that’s not what research typically shows. In fact, people tend to dislike people about whom they have an equal amount of positive and negative information (Skowronski & Carlston, 1989). In other words, people display a negativity bias in impression formation that leads to their giving more weight to negative traits than positive traits.
一种情况下，人们的实际评估并不遵循信息整合理论，这涉及到人们如何结合正面和负面信息。如果你给人们一份关于一个人的 10 项特质列表——五个正面特质和另外五个同样负面的特质——合理地假设人们对这个人的整体印象将大约是中性的，所有特质的评估平均接近零。然而，研究通常并不显示这一点。事实上，人们往往不喜欢那些他们拥有等量正面和负面信息的人（Skowronski & Carlston，1989）。换句话说，人们在印象形成中表现出一种负面偏见，导致他们给予负面特质比正面特质更多的权重。
Positive Evaluations Are Special, Too 积极的评估也很特别
The idea that we’re biased to overweight negative information seems reasonable, until you realize that the implication of this is that we’d come to dislike most people. In fact, data suggest exactly the opposite. People tend to have positive impressions about most of the people they meet, especially people about whom they don’t know very much. How is this possible? It turns out that we don’t start off with a negative evaluation of people. Rather, before we know anything about a person, we have a positive evaluation of them. This is called the positivity offset and means that, in order to actually dislike someone, we need the negative information we learn about them to significantly outweigh the positive information (Cacioppo et al., 1997). The more and more information we learn about a person, the less important the positivity offset becomes in our overall evaluation. So, the positivity offset is most relevant when meeting new people.
这个认为我们倾向于对超重负面信息产生偏见的想法似乎合理，直到你意识到这意味着我们可能会不喜欢大多数人。事实上，数据显示正好相反。人们往往对遇到的大多数人都有积极的印象，尤其是对那些他们不太了解的人。这是怎么可能的呢？实际上，我们并不是一开始就对人们有负面评价。相反，在我们对一个人了解任何信息之前，我们对他们就有积极的评价。这被称为积极偏差，意味着为了真正不喜欢一个人，我们需要从他们那里学到的负面信息显著超过正面信息（Cacioppo 等，1997）。我们了解一个人的信息越多，积极偏差在我们整体评价中的重要性就越小。因此，积极偏差在认识新人的时候最为相关。
We Don’t Just Judge People on the Basis of Known Personality Traits 我们不仅仅根据已知的个性特征来判断人们
Finally, one additional way that people depart from Anderson’s model is that they evaluate people based on traits that they’ve never seen these people actually exhibit. That is, just like knowing a person’s category (e.g., they’re a physicist) can lead us to infer that they have specific traits (e.g., they’re smart), knowing a trait that a person has (e.g., they’re artistic) can also lead us to infer other traits (e.g., they’re passionate). The fact that we make assumptions about additional traits people have without explicit evidence that they actually possess these traits shows the operation of an implicit personality theory—a belief that certain traits go together more than others (Sedikides & Anderson, 1994).
最后，人们离开安德森模型的一种额外方式是，他们根据他们从未见过这些人实际表现出的特质来评估这些人。也就是说，就像知道一个人的类别（例如，他们是物理学家）可以让我们推断他们具有特定的特质（例如，他们聪明），知道一个人具有的特质（例如，他们有艺术天赋）也可以让我们推断其他特质（例如，他们热情）。我们在没有明确证据表明他们实际上具有这些特质的情况下，对人们具有的额外特质做出假设，这表明了隐含人格理论的作用——一种信念，即某些特质比其他特质更经常地一起出现（Sedikides & Anderson，1994）。
Overall, the mathematical models of impression formation seem like simple and sensible ways for people to form impressions of others—but, in actuality, the mechanisms that underlie the way we come to like or dislike others are significantly more complicated.
总体而言，印象形成的数学模型似乎是一种简单而合理的让人们形成对他人的印象的方法——但实际上，我们喜欢或不喜欢他人的背后机制要复杂得多。