Person perception, reputations, and shared information in the social network context

这项资助的研究超越了传统的印象形成研究方法。印象形成长期以来一直是社会心理学的核心话题，通常被视为一个感知者内部的纯粹认知过程。相反，这项研究考察了社交网络背景下的印象，当许多人与他人互动和分享信息时，这种印象就会出现。人们对他人的印象是社会生活的基本工具。它们影响着我们是否相信某人的观点，或者选择与某人交朋友、约会或合作。虽然现有的研究已经澄清了许多与形成印象有关的认知过程，但其他重要方面仍未得到研究，特别是感知者将他人传递的关于另一个人的信息整合起来的方式，而不是仅仅依靠第一手的观察。更全面的印象形成不仅涉及个体感知者的认知过程，还涉及感知者主动从他人那里获取信息的二元互动过程，以及社会网络中的信息流过程。该研究建议使用计算模型和实验方法来解决四个关键问题：(1)当感知者可以主动选择他们接收到的关于一个人的信息的内容和数量，而不是局限于固定的、预先指定的信息体（正如大多数现有的研究）时，印象会有什么不同？(2)感知者是否意识到他人的一般声誉，这些声誉如何影响感知者自己的印象？(3)感知者是否意识到社会传播信息中的潜在偏见，他们是否能够纠正这种偏见？(4)当A对B非常了解（通过第三方了解），而B完全不了解A时，不对称熟悉度如何影响人际交往？由此产生的研究结果将对偏见和刻板印象产生影响，这些偏见和刻板印象也会通过社交网络构建和传播，并将解决对人们日常生活很重要的问题。除了这项工作将带来的科学进步外，该项目还旨在促进本科生和研究生的教学、培训和学习。

The research supported by this grant innovates beyond traditional approaches to studying impression formation. Impression formation, which has been a core topic in social psychology for a long time, has generally been treated as a purely cognitive process within one perceiver. This research instead examines impressions in the context of the social network, as emerging when many people interact and share information with others. People's impressions of others are fundamental tools for social life. They influence whether we trust someone's opinion, or choose to befriend, date, or cooperate with someone. While existing research has clarified many of the cognitive processes involved in forming impressions, other important aspects remain unexamined, especially the ways perceivers incorporate information about another person passed along by others rather than relying solely on firsthand observations. A fuller picture of impression formation must involve not only cognitive processes within the individual perceiver, but also dyadic interaction processes through which perceivers actively elicit information from others, and processes of information flow in social networks. The research proposed uses computational modeling and experimental approaches to address four key questions: (1) How do impressions differ when perceivers can actively choose what and how much information they receive about a person, rather than being limited to a fixed, pre-specified body of information (as in most existing research)? (2) Are perceivers aware of others' general reputations, and how do those reputations affect the perceiver's own impression? (3) Are perceivers aware of potential biases in socially transmitted information and can they correct for such bias? (4) How does asymmetric familiarity influence interpersonal interaction, when person A knows a lot about B (learned from third parties) but B does not know A at all? The research findings resulting from this will have implications for prejudice and stereotyping, which are also constructed and spread through social networks, and will address questions that are important to people's daily lives. In addition to the scientific advances that will result from this work, the project also aims to promote teaching, training, and learning among undergraduate and graduate students.