Social Psychology 477get. This suggests that the older children changed their cognition, with effort changing the
desirability of the stickers, like the adults in the classic Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) study.
But the younger children gave away significantly more unattractive stickers that were hard
to earn compared to those that were easily earned, suggesting that they chose to change
their conflicting behavior rather than their cognition. It may be that changing one’s cogni-
tions requires a little more brain maturation than the younger children possessed.
Cognitive dissonance theory has been challenged over the last 50 years by other possi-
ble explanations. Daryl Bem’s self-perception theory says that instead of experiencing negative
tension, people look at their own actions and then infer their attitudes from those actions
(Bem, 1972). New research on dissonance still occurs, much of it focusing on finding the
areas of the brain that seem to be involved when people are experiencing dissonance. These
studies have found that the left frontal cortex (where language and much of our decision
making occurs) is particularly active when people have made a decision that reduces dis-
sonance and then acted upon that decision (Harmon-Jones, 2000, 2004, 2006; Harmon-Jones
et al., 2008, 2011). Since reducing cognitive dissonance is mainly a function of people
“talking” themselves into or out of a particular course of action, this neurological finding is
not surprising. But researchers at Yale University have found surprising evidence for cogni-
tive dissonance in both 4-year-old humans and capuchin monkeys—two groups that are not
normally associated with having the developed higher-level mental abilities thought to be
in use during the resolution of dissonance (Egan et al., 2007; Egan et al., 2010). Are monkeys
and preschool humans more complex thinkers than we had assumed? Or are the cognitive
processes used to resolve dissonance a lot simpler than previously indicated? Obviously,
there are still questions to be answered with new research in cognitive dissonance.
Impression Formation
12.8 Describe how people form impressions of others.
When one person meets another for the first time, it is the first opportunity either person
will have to make initial evaluations and judgments about the other. That first opportu-
nity is a very important one in impression formation, the forming of the first knowledge
a person has about another person. Impression formation includes assigning the other
person to a number of categories and drawing conclusions about what that person is
likely to do—it’s really all about prediction. In a sense, when first meeting another per-
son, the observer goes through a process of concept formation similar to that discussed in
Chapter Seven. Impression formation is another kind of social cognition.
There is a primacy effect in impression formation: The first time people meet some-
one, they form an impression of that person, often based on physical appearance alone,
that persists even though they may later have other contradictory information about
that person (DeCoster & Claypool, 2004; Lorenzo et al., 2010; Luchins, 1957; Macrae &
Quadflieg, 2010). So the old saying is pretty much on target: First impressions do count.
SOCIAL CATEGORIZATION One of the processes that occur when people meet some-
one new is the assignment of that person to some kind of category or group. This
assignment is usually based on characteristics the new person has in common with
other people or groups with whom the perceiver has had prior experience. This social
categorization is mostly automatic and occurs without conscious awareness of the
process (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000; Vernon et al., 2014). Although this is a natural
process (human beings are just born categorizers, to Learning Objective 7.2),
sometimes it can cause problems. When the characteristics used to categorize the per-
son are superficial* ones that have become improperly attached to certain ideas, such
as “red hair equals a bad temper,” social categorization can result in a stereotype, a
belief that a set of characteristics is shared by all members of a particular social category
At this job fair in Shanghai, China, thousands
of applicants wait hopefully in line for an opportunity to
get a job interview. Making a good first impression is
important in any job interview situation, but when the
competition numbers in the thousands, the people who
will most likely get interviews are those who are neatly
dressed and well groomed.impression formation
the forming of the first knowledge
that a person has concerning another
Rerson.*superficial: on the surface.
social categorization
the assignment of a person one
has just met to a category based on
characteristics the new person has in
common with other people with whom
one has had eZRerience in the Rast.