Collaborative Research: Using behavioral, computational, and neural approaches to understand correction of first impressions.

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Developing correct impressions of others is critical in many situations, including medical, legal, and interpersonal. It is sometimes hard to get past one’s initial positive or negative impressions of other people, even when new information is learned about them. Psychological science has shown that people pay a lot of attention to other’s initial behaviors and draw conclusions about those individuals based on those initial behaviors. For example, meeting someone who is being rude to another person may quickly lead to forming a negative impression. Even if people behave differently later on, and in different circumstances, it can be hard to move past those original feelings. Often, the first information people learn about another person might be false to begin with. This can happen through mistaken interpretations of someone’s behavior, false news or misinformation, learning information out of context, or through gossip or rumors. These issues are of particular importance when making important decisions regarding activities such as college admissions, hiring, promotion, and assessing patients and clients in medicine and law. These kinds of impressions have the potential to influence behavior, and so it is important to understand how these kinds of impressions can be corrected. This project examines people’s ability to accurately learn about the world around them, and when and how new information changes pre-existing impressions and beliefs. Understanding when and how people change their minds about other people is critically important for understanding how to correct biased assumptions. The information gained from this research will help illuminate how decision-makers integrate new information about individuals, such as patients, criminal suspects, clients, and job applicants, into their overall impressions. This project focuses on two main theoretical questions about how people correct their impressions of other people. One question is whether updating of impressions occurs through “reconsolidation” versus “contextualization”. Reconsolidation occurs when new information that contradicts a first impression is integrated into the original information, such that the original memory is changed and is no longer recalled (i.e., a long-lasting change occurs). For example, when a public health official tries to correct misinformation about a current health policy, the ideal case would be that the false initial belief is completely replaced with the correct one. Contextualization, on the other hand, is when new memories are added to the original memory, and are tied to the situation in which the information was encountered. As a result, the first impression can still be activated from memory in that same situation. That is, the original memories are still retained, along with the new memories. However, they are tied to specific circumstances (e.g., she is rude at work, but polite when socializing). The second question concerns the durability of, and the time course over which, updating occurs. It is expected that updating that occurs through reconsolidation will last longer than updating that occurs through contextualization. This research tests how these processes influence person perception decisions over time. The studies examine these questions using behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational approaches. Results will have implications for models of person memory, impression formation, and persuasion. The project will contribute to a base of knowledge concerning how decision makers integrate new information about other people, with relevance to interactions with patients, criminal suspects, clients, and job applicants. This project is co-funded by the Social Psychology and the Perception, Action, and Cognition Programs.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.