The study of cue dominance in impression formation

Abstract

This study was designed to examine which of the two cues, visual or auditory, was dominant in impression formation, and how the cue dominance varied according to the cognitive dimensions, sex of the perceivers, and sex of the stimulus persons.
Each perceiver was asked to rate the personalities of the same stimulus persons on the individual cue conditions, as well as on a“whole cue condition”involving the simultaneous presentation of both cues. The index for the effectiveness of each cue was the correlation coefficient which indicated profile similarity between the single cue condition ratings and the whole cue condition ratings.
The main results were as follows.
(1) Generally, the auditory cue was more dominant than the visual one.
(2) In the case of male perceivers, contribution of the auditory cue was dominant independently of the cognitive dimensions, while with female perceivers, the cue dominance varied according to the cognitive dimensions.