Impression order effects as a function of the personal relevance of the object of description

The influence of different target stimuli on impression order effects was tested. Sixty Ss evaluated bivalent sets of personality trait adjectives which purportedly described a hypothetical stranger, the E, or the Ss themselves. Under unwarned recall conditions, variations in the object of description significantly influenced impression order effects (p < .01). It was suggested that this effect may have been a function of attention decrements and implicit evaluations associated with various levels of personal relevance of the impression formation task. Analyses of adjective recall supported the verbal memory hypothesis of impression formation for only the LH sets in the forewarned recall condition. Recall analyses, however, suggested the importance of recall measurement criteria used in tests of the verbal memory hypothesis.