Compatriot and foreigner: A study of impression formation in three countries.

Abstract

k commonsense observation is the starting point of our inquiry.If one were to enter a room and be introduced to a Frenchman, a German, and an American, it would be likely that one's first impressions of the three would be such as to magnify the difference between our new acquaintances.TheFrenchman might appear more "typically French," the German more "typically German," and the American more "typically American."Our perceptual selectivity would register cues that differentiate the three in terms of their most evident difference:their nationality.To this commonsense observation we must add a second.It is also likely that, if one were an Imerican, the Frenchman and German would seem more "typical" of their nationality than would the American to whom we had been introduced.And this would perhaps be the more so to the degree that we were well acquainted with Americans but had experienced little contact with Frenchmen or Germans.