Impressions

Introductory Activity

Each group will be given a photo of a person.

Write 7 words that describe the personality and/or behaviours of that person

Be prepared to share your descriptions with the class!

Impressions

What did you use to make these judgements?

Be prepared to share your descriptions with the class!

Impressions

An impression is an idea about a person’s emotions, motivations (drives) and personality gained from the situation they are in and their behaviour.

You gain impressions of others from their non-verbal & verbal communication.

What impression are you supposed to gain from this?

Non Verbal Communication

You take note of the following in forming your impression

1. Physical characteristics – age, height, weight etc that relate to stereotypes.

2. Eye Contact – staring is regarded as a hostile act while not making eye contact can be considered untrustworthy or submissive

3. Facial expression – the facial expression for surprise, fear, sadness, happiness, anger and disgust are the same across all cultures

Non Verbal Communication

4. Posture, gait (the way someone walks), movement *

5. Posture – open verus closed posture *

6. Gestures – friendly or unfriendly *

7. Closeness (proximity) *

Note down the 7 forms of non verbal communication listed here.

Refer to page 63 of your text.

Add descriptions to types 4-7 (labelled *)

Verbal Communication

Affects impressions when you can speak to someone

Semantics = meaning of words = what is said

Expressive level = how it is said

Paralanguage = emphasis in speech

Read p 64 of text.

Carry out the activity in the Activity Box on p64

Principles of Impression Formation

1. Your opinions of others are drawn from limited information

2. Impressions are partly based on stereotypes held by the person forming the impression

3. First impressions are formed in the first 15 seconds of an interaction and are based on appearance

Principles of Impression Formation

4. First impressions form a base line for later impressions & judgements

5. Impressions are made of judgements made on at least 3 different levels

physical socio-cultural

psychological

Read the explanations of these principles on p 63 of the text & add to the above points

• First impressions are very important – the primacy effect

• We attach more importance to the initial information that we learn about a person. New information can have an effect and change our impressions, but this new information has to work harder.

Principles of Impression Formation

• A new player in the team does extremely well at the training camp and greatly impresses the coach with his skill and his work ethic.

• Then his performance drops off.• To maintain this initial impression the coach

attributes this poor performance to fatigue, bad luck etc.

How might the coach have explained the drop in performance if his initial impression had not

been good?

Application

We tend to see what we expect to see.

Imagine that you are going to meet a new group of people at a barbecue and you are going with a friend.

Your friend tells you that Robyn is a distant, cold and aloof person.You try to make conversation, but Robyn avoids your eye contact and doesn’t say much, let alone show an interest in you.

What is your impression of Robyn?

Application

What if Robyn had been described as a nice person, but extremely shy.

When you try to make conversation Robyn avoids your eye contact and doesn’t say much.

What is your impression of Robyn in this situation?

Your impressions of Robyn confirm your expectations

You see what you expect to see

Application

Impression Management

The behaviours that you perform to control the impression that others form of you

The behaviours may be conscious or unconscious

Impression management continues over course of a relationship

Read the passage below:You have been invited to party where there will be a people from a range of age groups. There will be people there that you wish to impress.There may be many reasons for this.You want to be likedYou want to be noticedYou want to impress a prospective employerYou may want to impress a prospective partner/mate

Impression Management

What do you do to create a positive impression?

How can you create the right impression for everyone?

Read the text on page 65

Impression Management

Self Handicapping

The actions that people take to handicap their own performance so that there is an excuse for failure that they believe will occur

Purpose: 1. protection of self esteem in failure

2. enhancement of self image in success

Real self handicapping – behaviour that sabotages performance

Feigned self handicapping – the making up of excuses to use in case failure occurs

Read p66 -7 of the text and give examples of both kinds of self handicapping

Self Handicapping

Use the text on page 66-8 to carry out the following:

Describe the relationship between self esteem and the purpose of self handicapping

Describe a negative aspect of self handicapping

Carry out Activity page 50 Psychology Essentials Workbook

Self Handicapping