Cognitive Organization of Person Impressions.

Abstract

This paper reports two series of studies. The first series examines the effect of making first impression judgments on memory for information about the person. It was found that even up to one week later, people have a better memory for facts relevant to the judgment than for irrelevant facts. The second series of studies deals with how memory is searched when making a decision or judgment about another person. It was found that people do not systematically review previously obtained facts about the person. Rather, they recall previous judgments they made about the person, even if those judgments are irrelevant to the present decision, and use that as the basis for the required decision. (Author)