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Impressions
People form impressions, or vague ideas, about other people through the
process of person perception.
The Influence of Physical Appearance
Physical appearance has a strong effect on how people are perceived by
others. Two aspects of physical appearance are particularly important:
attractiveness and baby-faced features.
Attractiveness
Research shows that people judge attractive-looking people as
having positive personality traits, such as sociability, friendliness,
poise, warmth, and good adjustment. There is, however, little actual
correlation between personality traits and physical
attractiveness.
People also tend to think that attractive-looking people are more
competent. Because of this bias, attractive people tend to get better jobs
and higher salaries.
Baby-Faced Features
People’s attractiveness does not have much influence on judgments
about their honesty. Instead, people tend to be judged as honest if they
have baby-faced features, such as large eyes and rounded chins. Baby-faced
people are often judged as being passive, helpless, and naïve. However, no
correlation exists between being baby-faced and actually having these
personality traits.
Evolutionary theorists believe the qualities attributed to baby-faced
people reflect an evolved tendency to see babies as helpless and needing
nurture. Such a tendency may have given human ancestors a survival
advantage, since the babies of people who provided good nurturing were more
likely to live on to reproduce.
Cognitive Schemas
When people meet, they form impressions of each other based on their
cognitive schemas. People use cognitive schemas to organize
information about the world. Cognitive schemas help to access information
quickly and easily.
Social schemas are mental models that represent and
categorize social events and people. For example, certain social schemas tell
people what it means to be a spectator at a baseball game. There are also social
schemas for categories of people, such as yuppie or
geek. These social schemas affect how people perceive
events and others. Once a social schema is activated, it may be difficult to
adjust a perception of a person or event.
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