“FACEBOOK STUDY” Machado 2
Paper III: Study Two Literature Review
Roberto Machado
PSY 3215
Dr. Anabelle Andon
Florida International University
July 5, 2021
Study Two: Information and First Impression
People rely on information provided on the internet and social media to understand how others perceive them in the modern world. Among the social media sites, Facebook is a common platform where people rely on friends and followers to provide information related to their personality, public affairs, or even social life. The responses range from positive to mixed reactions. As a result, the first impression plays a critical role in defining a person on social media. Existing literature has tried to discuss how information and first impression affects people’s views about each other. Other than social media, first impressions are used in meetings and interviews – first impressions tend to influence personal judgment even in the presence of contradicting evidence about a person. The current study explores how the first impression works and its impacts on an individual’s perception of others.
Numerous researchers have explained how the first impression works and its impacts on how people view others. Bacev-Giles & Haji (2017) examined the role of personality on first impressions. The researchers studied the effects of perceiver’s views of others on their social attraction after interacting on social media platforms such as Facebook (Bacev-Giles & Haji, 2017). People usually overemphasize the significance of minimal facial cues in online settings. There is a high propensity to use minimal social signals to assume and fill gaps about the impression of others.
Bacev-Giles & Haji (2017) used computer-guided communications such as Facebook comments to investigate the information and degree of impressions formed about online people with limited online profiles. Notably, the researchers examined the possibility of gender-based impressions. The participants described the first impressions of others with various attributes such as likeability (Bacev-Giles & Haji, 2017). While using response surface analysis, the authors concluded that people are more likely to be attracted to individuals’ better versions of themselves, especially when interacting face-to-face (Bacev-Giles & Haji, 2017). Therefore, people are more likely to describe others less negatively and more positively, particularly for personality. However, people who rate personality traits favorably tend to center on the appearance of others.
Regarding the role of character attributes in first impresses, Cemalcilar et al. (2018) further researched the apparent and actual similarity impacts on social communications. Due to the absence of significant body cues and related information during the first encounter with Facebook posts, impression creation differs substantially in online contexts than face-to-face encounters (Cemalcilar et al., 2018). Therefore, the existing research on face-to-face impressions cannot be generalized for online interactions. With that in mind, Cemalcilar et al. (2018) indicated that first impressions in online contexts are formed instantaneously. Cemalcilar et al. (2018) concluded that people are more likely to explain the first views of others more strongly when interacting physically.
The reason why people form impressions of others is critical in determining the way they process information about others. Different people trying to discover facts about another person might leave them with various impressions depending on their mindset. While some might engage in systematic processing, others tend to rely on heuristics consistent with the goals of associating with a particular individual. Such differences in processing information might mixed reactions, especially when giving the first impression of others. Significantly, one’s perceptions are greatly influenced by environmental cues. The perceivers’ long-run purpose might also impact their interpretations of other’s actions, especially during their first encounters. For instance, people trying to reduce uncertainties are more likely to look for stable personal traits about others. Even after learning the impressions are inaccurate, it becomes hard to change their first impressions about a person.
Though people are proficient in forming the first impression of others, how easily such perceptions can be updated has been studied by numerous researchers. Mann & Ferguson (2017) conducted a study to examine whether implicit impresses can be upturned via interpretations. Implicit impresses have been pigeon-holed as challenging to inverse. However, recent research by Mann & Ferguson (2017) indicates that such first impressions can be overturned through the reinterpretation of previous learning. Such overturning has been explored in a similar environment in which the perceptions were created, indicating that implicit reversing might only be attainable with brief windows. In other words, reversal of implicit impressions must occur before the first impresses are intact and when the memory regarding the earlier info is strongest.
Considerably, Mann & Ferguson (2017) noted that the implicit impressions might fail to update the first impressions when the memory has been consolidated or forgotten the primary details to be reinterpreted. The results from Mann & Ferguson’s (2017) study explicitly concluded that implicit reversal occurred after a 2-day delay, even for people with poor explicit memory. Therefore, the implications of the psychology of first impression reversal and formation and reversal.
The majority of the things people learn about others are extremely obtrusive, and the ambiguity is solved in the presence of what is already known. The way people perceive one another is usually open to interpretation, and the other person’s traits can drive the resultant impression. The beliefs people have about a person can result in bias regarding how they respond to future evaluative information. Therefore, the order of information matters, especially when dealing with implicit impressions. Fourakis & Cone (2019) experimented to determine how order influences the creation of implicit impressions. The authors conducted three experimentations with nine hundred participants.
Holding an initial impression of a person determines the order of influence in which people learn about their personality qualities on the first impressions they create about them. People are likely to develop more promising first impressions of others when they learned about their confident attributes, followed by their undesirable ones, such as jealousy. However, Fourakis & Cone (2019) claim that reversing information order interferes with the final impression. The primacy impact has been experimented with to explain how information order influences implicit assessment. Fourakis & Cone (2019) used the evaluative conditioning paradigm to understand the formation of implicit first impressions. Evaluative conditioning explains the process in which valuation changes happen due to the repetitive pairing of an attitude object with an impulsive negative or positive inducement.
The degree to which info beyond mere concurrence can define implicit comments on Facebook comments and other responses must be examined. Fourakis & Cone (2019) extended their investigation to study how timing and stimuli pairing can affect implicit impressions. The information order effects present a significant test for how aspects beyond co-concurrent stimuli pairing affect implicit beliefs. Fourakis & Cone (2019) concluded that the order of information exhibited substantial negativity, neutrality, or negativity. Also, unintentional evaluations of other people can be used to explain implicit responses. Therefore, just like explicit impressions, implicit views are subject to primacy effects.
Concerning a study conducted by Bacev-Giles & Haji (2017), another research investigated how the contents of a blog post and its comments influence the reader’s attitude and impressions (Lewandowsky et al., 2019). Social media has become a significant environment for discussing numerous issues such as climate change. The comment section in the media platforms plays a critical part in disseminating contrarian standpoints that question mainstream scientific matters. As a result, Lewandowsky et al. (2019) conducted research in 2014 with a sample size of 400 participants (Lewandowsky et al., 2019). The participants included the members of a bipartite group comprising more than five million United States residents. The participants were recruited through propensity weighting to conform to the United States Census demographic distribution (Lewandowsky et al., 2019). After offering informed consent, the 400 participants read the media post and comments and then responded to their likeability or dislike. The results indicated the potential social implication of comments in social media seems predominantly inconsistent depending on the time the readers write the comments. Lewandowsky et al. (2019) concluded that ultimate views are shaped partly by the readers’ impression of how extensively an opinion is shared on social media by other users. The apparent social accord among users is defined by whether the blog comments reject or accept the post.
In the same context, the new independent variable is comments from blog readers (study two). In the previous study (study one), the personality variable was examined but omitted in the second study. The extent of acceptability or rejection of the media post by the blog reader will affect how others endorse the overall post even without reading. The first impression of the readers depends on the information provided by the other readers. Positive comments are more likely to influence a person’s view of a post even without considering the personality or past experiences.
References
Bacev-Giles, C., & Haji, R. (2017). Online first impressions: Person perception in social media profiles. Computers in Human Behavior, 75, 50-57. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2017.04.056.
Cemalcilar, Z., Baruh, L., Kezer, M., Kamiloglu, R. G., & Nigdeli, B. (2018). Role of personality traits in first impressions: An investigation of actual and perceived personality similarity effects on interpersonal attraction across communication modalities. Journal of Research in Personality, 76, 139-149. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656618302022
Fourakis, E., & Cone, J. (2019). Matters Order: The Role of Information Order on Implicit Impression Formation. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(1), 56-63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619843930
Lewandowsky, S., Cook, J., Fay, N., & Gignac, G. E. (2019). Science by social media: Attitudes towards climate change are mediated by perceived social consensus. Memory & Cognition, 47(8), 1445-1456. DOI:10.3758/s13421-019-00948-y
Mann, T. C., & Ferguson, M. J. (2017). Reversing implicit first impressions through reinterpretation after a two-day delay. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 68, 122-127. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2016.06.004.
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