How do people form impressions of others?

People spontaneously form impressions of unfamiliar others in everyday life, such as inferring how competent, kind, or energetic someone is. We are interested in a broad range of questions along this line of research including but not limited to:

• How are interpersonal impressions shaped by and expressed through verbal and non-verbal behavior (e.g., real-life conversation, affective responses, physiological signals, interacting behavior)?
• How do people take cues from complex information streams in the real world to form impressions of others?
• How do comprehensive social and physical contexts shape the impressions people form of others?
• How are various impressions we form of others organized and related to each other in the mind?
• How do people integrate new information that they obtain to update impressions of others?
• How does impression formation interact with other social and cognitive processes (e.g., mental states, memory)?
• How do culture and language shape the way people form impressions of others?

How do impressions of others influence real-world behavior?

Impressions of others' general characteristics can be inferred based on limited information such as physical appearances or a few instances of behaviors, or through real-life interactions. We are interested in a broad range of questions along this line of research including but not limited to:

• How do person impressions shape the dynamics of real-life dyadic and group interactions?
• How do impressions of others influence decision-making in the real world (e.g., politics, law, science)?
• How do we apply person perception theories to promote collective behavior (e.g., climate actions)?
• How does the over-generalization of stereotypes to non-human objects (e.g., data viz) influence real-world behavior?