A systemic approach to impression formation: from verbal to multimodal processes

Abstract

Our views of how interpersonal relationships are forged and the factors that influence how we form impressions of others have always been a central chapter in social psychology. It was Salomon Asch who laid the foundations of what was to become social cognition with his classic studies on impression formation in 1946. He demonstrated that warm and cold as “central traits” play a critical role in dramatically shaping impressions. The cognitive revolution was to tame this perspective into a representational paradigm that captured the imagination of researchers for an extended period emerging from person perception, and developing to person cognition, to person memory and social cognition (e.g., Ostrom, 1984; see Waenke, Samochowiec, & Landwehr, this volume, for a different perspective).