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

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

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.