The Dual Processing Model Test Of Impression Formation Under The Situation Of Anti-initial Impression Formation

Impression formation has always been a significant research field of social psychology.It is a process in which an individual integrates various sources of information of another individual to form a complete judgment.Asch first proposed the concept of impression formation from the perspective of information processing.He holds that impression formation of an individual is a process that the perceiver tends to form an overall perception towards the individual by targeting peculiarity as the core content.An individual's ability to shape impressions of others is largely based on the information he or she has obtained about others in a certain environment.With regard to the classification of the information,two categories have been put forward in previous studies,which are mainly stereotype and individual information.Stereotype means that social classification are made according to the information of gender,age,race and occupation.In terms of the classification,an individual can judge which group the target belongs to so that he or she can gain the fixed impression of the whole group.Many researchers deem that stereotype is associated with certain peculiarity and behaviors.Individual information refers to the comprehensive and overall information about people's behaviors,personal traits and family backgrounds.From previous views,the formation of individual impression is the outcome of integrating individuals' whole information.Some scholars,meanwhile,believe that perception individuals separately process stereotype and individual information according to a particular sequence.Still other scholars support the parallel model of impression formation.Distinguished from the sequence processing model,this model shows that in the procedure of impression formation perceivers' processing of stereotype and individual information take place simultaneously.At the same time,they restrict the meaning of each other and both have an effect on the formation of impression.According to dual process model,there are two types of processing model of impression formation.One is top-down processing based on stereotype;the other is bottom-up processing based on characteristics.Dual process model is based on different memory systems which include the memory system of fast learning and slow learning system.Similar to dual attitude model,an individual may also develop explicit attitude and implicit attitude confronting with the target.This thesis,based on dual process model theory,explores the dual process structure of impression formation as well as its formation and change of psychological process by two experiments.It also verifies that explicit attitude and implicit attitude are two independent structures.Experiment one sets experimental group and control group.Two groups study different initial impression information and their explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes are measured after study respectively.After the measurement,subjects in experimental group learn anti-initial impression information,while those in control group still accept the information study which nature is the same as initial impression.The explicit attitude and the implicit attitude are measured again after study.The reinforced experimental group and the reinforced control group conduct the third round of the anti-initial impression information study and measure the explicit attitude and implicit attitude again.The experiment process in Experiment Two is same as in Experiment One.The difference between two experiments is that in Experiment One,subjects in the experimental group receive negative initial impression information,and subjects in the control group accept positive initial impression information,while in Experiment Two,subjects in the experimental group receive positive initial impression information,and subjects in the control group accept negative initial information.After experimental data analysis,the following conclusions can be drawn:Firstly,through descriptive information learning,subjects can form impressions that are the same as descriptive ones.By anti-initial impression information learning,the impressions that the subjects had originally established will change to some extent.Secondly,after forming a negative explicit attitude and then presenting negative information,the overall explicit attitude can be shaped.This type of overall explicit attitude has more advantage than that is shaped after forming a positive explicit attitude and then presenting negative information.Thirdly,after forming a positive impression and then receiving negative information,an overall impression can be shaped.This kind of overall impression is better than that is shaped after receiving negative information forming and then forming a impression.