Affect Control Theory: Impressions

Impressions From an Event

We have feelings about actor, behavior, object, and setting when a social event begins. The pre-event feelings could be drawn from our sentiments about the event's elements, or they could be feelings that developed as a result of recent happenings. The occurring event changes pre-event feelings to new feelings, as shown in this diagram. (Setting is dropped in this diagram for simplicity.)

eventEffects.gif (6954 bytes)

For example, suppose we observe an employer cheats an employee. Initially we might feel positive toward the employer and employee, and feel that an act of cheating is very bad. Seeing the employer cheat the employee makes the employer seem very bad. The event causes neutralization of the employee, too, as if we have to reserve judgment about this employee under the presumption that the individual might deserve victimization. The act of cheating remains bad in the context of this event, but not as bad as usual, as if its evilness gets bounded by the mundaneness of the workplace circumstances.

Impression-Formation Processes

Both pre-event feelings and the impressions emerging from the event can be represented as EPA measurements. Social psychologists have developed equations for accurately predicting the EPA numbers representing outcome impressions from the set of EPA numbers representing pre-event feelings.

Impression-formation equations consist of many terms. Each term represents a mental process that occurs while interpreting events.

Stability

Every impression-formation equation has a stability term. That fact means that the mind always transfers some pre-event feeling toward an event element on an EPA dimension to the post-event feeling involving the same event element on the same EPA dimension. For example, we have a tendency to see actors as good after events if the actors were good to begin with, and we tend to see actors as bad after events if they were bad before the event.

	The goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness of actors are stable to some degree.
	The goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness of object persons are stable to some degree.
	The goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness of settings are stable to some degree.
	The goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness of behaviors are stable to some degree.

Morality

Evaluation of an actor's behavior strongly influences the impression of the actor's goodness or badness after an event. For example, anyone rescuing another gets evaluative credit for engaging in a noble act. Anyone killing another is discredited for engaging in a horrible act.

The morality effect also is evident in the case of behaviors, except then it amounts to a stability effect (i.e., good behaviors remain good, bad behaviors remain bad). The morality effect gets involved in some other impression-formation processes, too, but only in small ways that will not be mentioned here.

	A similar effect transfers some of the potency of a behavior back to the actor. Interestingly, this behavior potency effect impacts on the object person, too, but works in the other direction: strong acts make the object seem weaker.
	Lively acts transfer activity back to the actor, and additionally make the actor seem more powerful. Quiet acts make the actor seem more inactive and powerless.

Consistency Effects

Consistency effects relate feelings on an EPA dimension regarding two different event elements. For example, an actor who performs a bad action on a good object person violates a consistency principle - that good objects require good treatment, and that bad objects require bad treatment - so the actor seems bad not only because of the morality effect but additionally because of behavior-object inconsistency.

Actor-behavior evaluation consistency has a notable impact on evaluation of actors. Actors gain some credit with observers by acting in accordance with the way the actors are evaluated. Actors get discredited to some degree by acting in ways that do not fit the way they are evaluated. For example, the politician kissed the child ordinarily improves evaluations of the politician, but this doesn't work for those who hate the politician. For them, kissing children is good but seems totally out of character for this politician, and the inconsistency reduces the positive impact.

Impressions of a behavior also are influenced by this effect. Thus, a good behavior seems defiled when used by an evil actor, and a bad behavior seems more honorable when performed by a valued actor.

Behavior-object evaluation consistency affects the impression of goodness-badness of the actor, object, and behavior in an event. That is, the goodness-badness of the behavior should be matched to the goodness-badness of the object person. If the two are matched, then actor, object, and behavior all seem nicer. If the behavior is inconsistent with the goodness-badness of the object, then actor, object, and behavior all seem less good. For example, politicians like to be seen kissing children because kissing is good, yielding a morality effect, but also because children are good so kissing children earns extra evaluative credit from performing an act that is consistent with the object.

Actor-behavior potency consistency reduces the apparent powerfulness of the actor but increases the apparent powerfulness of the object person. Thus, a powerful person who wants to maintain an impression of powerfulness should not engage in very powerful actions - that would make the actor seem less powerful, and the object person seem more powerful.

Congruencies

Congruency effects relate feelings on two different EPA dimensions regarding two different event elements.

Combinations of behavior evaluation with object potency affect evaluations of actors.

	Mercifulness. Behaving nicely to weak objects makes an actor seem good. (Another reason that politicians kiss children!)
	Courageousness. Directing bad actions to strong objects makes an actor seem fearless. (So politicians love to attack big government!)
	Sycophancy. Directing nice actions to strong objects makes an actor seem bad, like a toady.
	Ruthlessness. Directing evil actions toward weak objects makes an actor seem ruthless, abusive.

Combinations of behavior potency with object evaluation affect evaluations of actors. However, there are just two conditions since behavior potency ranges from powerful to not-powerful, never all the way to powerless.

	Righteousness. Directing potent activity toward evil people makes an actor seem positive.
	Impertinence. Directing overly potent activity toward a cherished person makes an actor seem improperly bold.

Balance Effects

Balance effects relate feelings on an EPA dimension regarding all three core event elements - actor, behavior, and object. The set of feelings is balanced if all three are positive, or if any two are negative. For example, actors seem extra good if an event combines a positive actor, a positive behavior, and a positive object person.

Evaluation balance. In effect, this balance effect enhances, or cancels, evaluation consistency effects. That is, this balance effect increases the actor-behavior consistency effect when the object is a good person, and cancels it when the object is a bad person. Similarly, the importance of the behavior-object consistency effect increases when the actor is a good person, but declines when the actor is bad.

Potency balance. This balance effect works inversely on actor evaluations. Powerful individuals seem less good when they direct powerful behaviors at each other; and powerless individuals also seem less good when they direct powerful behaviors at each other. Powerful individuals seem nicer if they direct potent acts at weak others or if weak individuals direct potent actions at them. Similarly weak individuals seem nicer if they direct powerful acts at powerful others, or have powerful others acting potently toward them. Assume, for example, that a toddler is weak, a father is powerful, and kissing is a deep, potent act. Then, a toddler kissing her father makes both child and parent seem very sweet.

Other Effects

The effects considered above have major impacts on impressions formed during social events, and most of these effects have been found operative in different societies (U.S.A., Canada, Japan). Other less important effects have been found in research studies, too. These other effects will not be discussed here.

Copular Assertions

Impression formation research in ACT involves action events, as just discussed, and copular assertions (e.g., the father is angry) studied as modifier-identity combinations (the angry father).

In the U.S.A. modifiers have more impact on the result than does the identity, roughly two to one. A consistency effect operates such that good modifiers with good identities seem especially good.

Cross-Cultural Variations

Impression-formation equations have been developed for actor-behavior-object events in U.S., Canadian, and Japanese studies, and equations for actor-behavior-object-setting events have been developed in the U.S.A. and Japan. Copular impressions have been studied in the U.S.A. and Japan. Relatively small variations occur cross-culturally for impression formation from events with transitive behaviors. A fair number of cultural variations have been found in impression formation from copular statements.

URL: www.indiana.edu/~socpsy/ACT/acttutorial/impressions.htm