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Flexible Diagnosticity in Person Impression Formation: An Integrative Framework.
Johannes Ziegler1, Linda McCaughey2, Klaus Fiedler3
1Ulm University, Germany.
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
|January 8, 2026
Summary
Understanding how people form impressions is key. This study shows that the information we seek and how we judge others depends on our initial beliefs and the context, influencing our impressions.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology
Background:
- Impression formation relies on inferring target characteristics from sampled behaviors.
- The diagnosticity of observed behaviors significantly influences this inference process.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test a likelihood-based conceptualization of diagnosticity in impression formation.
- To examine how the hypothesis being tested and situational base-rates shape diagnosticity.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Manipulated job profiles (hypotheses) in a personnel selection task.
- Experiments 2A & 2B: Manipulated valence base-rate expectations for psychotherapy patients.
Main Results:
- Hypothesis-relevant information had a greater impact on sampling and judgment than irrelevant information.
- Violations of group-based expectancies, particularly diagnostic ones, led to stronger judgments.
- Behavioral sampling and judgments aligned with the likelihood-based diagnosticity concept.
Conclusions:
- Diagnosticity is dependent on the specific hypothesis being considered.
- Situational base-rates and valence expectations influence the diagnosticity of behaviors.
- Impression formation processes are guided by a probabilistic, likelihood-based framework.
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