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Person and Costume: Effects on the Formation of First Impressions
Author(s) -
Conner Barbara Hunt,
Peters Kathleen,
Nagasawa Richard H.
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
home economics research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.372
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1552-3934
pISSN - 0046-7774
DOI - 10.1177/1077727x7500400103
Subject(s) - impression formation , psychology , impression , semantic differential , clothing , social psychology , stimulus (psychology) , precedent , social perception , cognitive psychology , perception , advertising , business , public law , archaeology , neuroscience , law , political science , history
This exploratory study examined the effects of the stimulus person and the clothing worn by the stimulus person on the formation of first impressions, where the stimulus per son and the observer were female peers. A four‐by‐four factorial experiment was designed to measure the simultaneous effects of person‐costume photographic stimuli on the subjects' initial formation of athletic, social, and intellectual impressions. Each of 240 female uni versity students was randomly assigned to respond to one of 16 person‐costume photo graphs on an Impression Measure developed for this study using the semantic differential technique. Analysis of variance and correlation ratios measured the extent to which person and costume affected the initial formation of the impression dimensions studied. Costume exerted major influence on the formation of social impression, person had greater effect on athletic impression, and neither person nor costume had a significant effect on intellectual impression.