The third party's influence on the change in person perception

The relation to self-schema, “thought”and credibility

Abstract

To examine how the third party's influence on the change in person perception varies with perceiver's self-schema, “thought”processes and credibility of third party's information, the following experiments were conducted to 129 female undergraduates. At the first stage, after impression rating of the target with ambivalence on extroversion-introversion dimension, subject's thought processes about the target were experimentally controlled. At the second stage, after manipulating credibility (high or low intimacy between the target and the third party), the third party's impression on the same target was informed to subjects. The third party's impression was so manipulated as to be in opposition to each subject's impression. Subjects were required to rate impressions again. The main results were: (a) Those who have no definite self-schema for extroversion-introversion dimension, were more influenced by third party's information than those who have definite self-schema (schematics). (b) Those whose thought processes were experimentally distracted, were more influenced by third party's information than those whose thought processes were experimentally strengthened. (c) Credibility factor was effective in distraction group, especially in schematics.