Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the negativity effects in impression formation and to see if the results of the study would support the Dual-Aspect Model in Person-Evaluation Dimension which was proposed by the first author (Cho, 1982a). For this purpose, three related expriments were conducted using college students as subjects. In Experiment I , 89 subjects were asked to evaluate the importance-values of 46 negative personality-trait-adjectives in forming impressions in two different situations : one being the information-dependent-situation and the other being effect-dependent-situation. As a result, 19 adjectives were identified to describe intellectual traits and 13 adjectives to describe social(or affective) traits. In Experiment II , stimulus persons supposed to possess three traits (two positive and one negative) were presented to two groups of subjects to form impressions in two different situation; : one group in the information-dependent-situation and the other group in effect-dependent-situation. The main dependent variables were the modifying capacities (the extent to which each trait pulls toward itself the evaluation of pairs in which it appears ; Feldman, 1966) of two different, traits, NIs (negative intellectual traits)and NSs(negative social traits), in two dependent situations. The results showed that the modifying capacities of NIs were higher than those of NSs in the information-dependent-situation, while the modifying capacities of NSs were higher than those of NIs in the effect-dependent-situation. In Experiment III, the same stimulus persons from the second experiment were presented to two groups to form impressions in two different dimensions : one group in good-bad dimension (favorability dimension) and the other group in like-dislike dimension (likability dimension). The main dependent variables of this experiment were, as in the second one, the modifying capacities of NIs and NSs in two impression - dimensions. It was found from this experiment that the modifying capacities of NIs and NSs were higher than those of the others in the favorability dimension and the likability dimension respectively. These results suggest that the first author's Dual-Aspect Model in Person-Evaluation Dimension (Cho, 1982a) is empirically supported also in experiments dealing with negativity effects in impression formation as well as in other experiments of impression-integration (Cho, 1982b, 1983) and of person-memory (Cho, 1984, 1985, 1986).