A replication study of “Forming impression of personality” (Asch, 1946)

Abstract

This paper presents the results of replications of Asch’s (1946) experiments 1 and 3. According to Asch, people’s formation of their impressions of others is greatly influenced by their central trait with warmth considered to be the important factor. The results of this experiment have been quoted in many social psychology textbooks: that the overall impression of a person is determined by the description of the person as “warm” (or “cold”) regardless of other peripheral traits. In fact, however, it seems that “warm” and “cold” are not the only traits that influence people’s impression formation. In the present study, we replicated Asch’s experiments 1 and 3 (experiment 1, N＝71) and extracted the trait that seemed to influence interpersonal impressions through a preliminary survey (N＝69) in experiment 2. We examined whether these traits had a strong influence on forming interpersonal impressions as well as “warm” and “cold” (experiment 3, N＝73). The results showed that “warm” and “cold”; “polite” and “blunt,” which were considered peripheral characteristics in Asch; and “expressive” and “expressionless,” which were newly examined, all had a significant effect on impressions.