Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Psychology; Psychology

Project Advisor 1

Kristin Lane

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Impression formation involves the use of swift, automatic judgements in combination with slower controlled processing of incoming information to adjust those judgements. “Thin-slice” literature has also shown us that humans are capable of surprisingly accurate interpersonal judgements from small snippets of expressive behavior. Although friendship does take time to develop, assessing others along dimensions that seem to be related to friendship development during the acquaintance process often involves interpersonal judgements. This researcher sought to determine whether interpersonal judgements made in the first minute of zero-acquaintance interaction (strangers meeting) are accurate and resilient enough to resist adjustments made after a subsequent longer introductory conversation. Findings did not support the original hypotheses. Results indicated that perceptions of personality were not very accurate after the first interaction, nor especially resilient to later updating over the second interaction. However, there were some differences in accuracy and resiliency depending on the personality domain assessed. Additionally, friendship-factors were not found to be resilient across interaction periods, although they were significantly related. Although the results were not what was predicted, they suggested the paradigm of the study has the potential to be useful in the fields of “thin-slices”, impression formation, and friendship/acquaintanceship processes. Suggestions for future research with this paradigm and the implications for these findings in the context of “thin-slice” and impression formation literature are discussed.

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Open Access

Creative Commons License

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