A "Nice" Impression

A few years ago, my older brother brought his new girlfriend home to meet my parents for the first time.  Because I was not there to meet her, I asked my mom what she was like afterward.  My mom started out by saying, “She’s really nice,” and then continued to say that she was “nice” multiple times throughout our conversation.  Because my mom used a fairly average trait multiple times to describe my brother’s new girlfriend, my main take-away from this conversation was that she was either really terrible (and my mom was trying to think of positive things to say) or that she was really boring. 

            Later on, I spoke with my brother to learn more about his new girlfriend and he was gushing about her, saying things like, “She’s really smart, she has a 4.0.  She loves animals.  She just got into veterinarian school.”  It was fairly clear that she made my brother very happy.  Yet, I could not overlook my first impression of her, that she was boring.

            Although my brother described his girlfriend overwhelmingly positively, you may be wondering why I still thought that she was average.  Social psychologist Norman Anderson would use his information integration theory (1981) to describe how I assimilated information about my brother’s girlfriend to form an impression of her.  Anderson would explain that I took a weighted average of the traits that I was presented (Anderson, 1981); in other words, I averaged how important I believed the traits to be.  For instance, to me, nice is about a six out of ten on importance, whereas intelligence is about a ten (not that nice isn’t a good trait, it is just not exceptional).  Thus, although my brother provided me with many remarkable traits (e.g., intelligence), my mom’s description (using a fairly average trait) diluted my impression, leading to her seeming fairly average and boring.

            Other social psychologists would say that my impression was influenced by confirmation biases, specifically a perseverance effect (Anderson, Lepper, & Ross, 1980; Darley & Gross, 1983).  Confirmation biases are when we understand information in light of previously held information, in order to confirm our first impression (Darley & Gross, 1983).  Because I had already formed an impression of my brother’s girlfriend as boring, I interpreted the traits he provided differently.  For example, I interpreted the fact that she has a 4.0 GPA to mean that she was no fun (even though having a 4.0 is a great thing in my book!). 

Furthermore, perseverance effects are when we persist in a belief, even when it has been discredited (Anderson et al., 1980).  My belief that she was boring continued, even after the first couple of times that I spent time with her and found her to be pretty interesting!  Luckily, I have gotten to know her better and have changed my impression of her, but it just goes to show that first impressions are not always accurate. (n=488)

References

Anderson, C. A., Lepper, M. R., & Ross, L. (1980). Perseverance of social theories: The role of explanation in the persistence of discredited information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1037-1049.

Anderson, N. H. (1981). Foundations of Information Integration Theory.  New York: Academic Press.

Darley, J. M. & Gross, P. H. (1983). A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 20-33.