http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2011/01/19/16943051.html
First Impressions Tough to Change, Study Says
From the page: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression, but you might be able to tweak it a bit.
New research from the University of Western Ontario suggests our gut reactions stick with us and are difficult to shake — but not impossible.
“Our initial impression is bound to context,” said Bertram Gawronski, Canada Research Chair in social psychology at Western, whose research, co-authored by Belgian and American scientists, is being published in the latest issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Put it this way, Gawronski said: If you think a new co-worker is a jerk, there’s not a lot he can do at the office to change your mind.
A few weeks later, you meet the co-worker at a party and realize he’s not so bad. Still, at work, you’ll be governed by your first — negative — gut reaction. Only in party situations will you be able to shake the gut reaction.
“If you see the person in multiple different contexts, at some point you bring these other impressions into the overall picture. But your gut responses are very consistent. They’re not thoughtful but rigid,” Gawronski said.
Gawronski scores expectancy-violating experiences — the new idea that the co-worker is a nice guy — as exceptions to the rule. The rule — our gut reaction that the guy is really a jerk — will be treated as valid except in the specific context in which it was violated.
Similar research has been done with animals. If a bell precedes an electric shock, the animal will learn to be afraid when it hears a bell. If you put that animal in a different setting and ring a bell, it won’t be scared. But stick it back in the original setting and it’ll exhibit the same fear response.
Gawronski and the other researchers showed human study participants either positive or negative information about an unknown person on a computer screen. Later, participants were presented with new information about the same individual, which was inconsistent with the initial information.
To study the influence of contexts, the researchers subtly changed the background colour of the computer screen while participants formed an impression of the target person.
When the researchers measured participants’ spontaneous reactions to the target person, they found the new information influenced their reaction only when the person was presented against the background in which the new information had been learned.
If the target person was presented against other backgrounds, the first impression dominated. So, you can change the first impression only if it’s challenged in different contexts.
“As long as a first impression is challenged only within the same context, . . . the first impression will dominate regardless of how often it is contradicted by new experiences.”
The research can be applied to the treatment of clinical disorders, such as phobias, Gawronski said. If a client is afraid of spiders, for example, and the fear is challenged in multiple different settings, therapy is more likely to be successful.
What researchers don’t quite know is how many times a first impression has to be challenged for it to be changed.
“We don’t know that, and we don’t know what makes a context a context,” Gawronski said. “If I make a first impression in a classroom, is the context any classroom or that particular classroom? We’re still working on that.””
aliasinkhorn 