Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 425–429

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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Can negative affect eliminate the power of first impressions? Affective influences onprimacy and recency effects in impression formation

Joseph P. ForgasSchool of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia

E-mail address: JP.Forgas@unsw.edu.au..URL: http://www.psych.unsw.edu.au/~joef/jforgas.h

0022-1031/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Inc. Aldoi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.11.005

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a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 1 September 2010Revised 28 October 2010Available online 27 November 2010

Can good or badmood influence the common tendency for people to form judgments based onfirst impressions?Based on research on impression formation and recent work on affect and social cognition, this experimentpredicted and found that positive mood increased, and negative mood eliminated the primacy effect. After anautobiographical mood induction (recalling happy or sad past events), participants (N=284) formedimpressions about a character, Jim described either in an introvert–extrovert, or an extrovert–introvert sequence(Luchins, 1958). Impression formation judgments revealed clear mood and primacy main effects, as well as amood by primacy interaction. Primacy effects were increased by positive mood, consistent with the moreassimilative, holistic processing style associated with positive affect. Negative mood in turn eliminated primacyeffects, consistent with a more accommodative, externally focused processing style. The relevance of thesefindings for first impressions in everyday judgments is considered, and their implications for recentaffect-cognition theories are discussed.

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Introduction

Forming accurate impressions about others is a critically importanttask in everyday life (Heider, 1958; Jones, 1990). Impression formationis often subject to a primacy effect, when early information has adisproportionate influence on judgments (Asch, 1946; Crano, 1977;Kelly, 1950; Luchins, 1958). Despite the practical importance of ‘firstimpressions’ in real-life situations such as job interviews, speed dating,political communication, marketing and advertising, not enough isknown about how a judge's psychological state, such as mood impactson the primacy effect. Drawing on recent affect-cognition theorizing(Bless & Fiedler, 2006; Bower, 1991; Forgas, 2002), this experimentexamined the possibility that goodmoodsmay increase, and badmoodseliminate the disproportionate influence of first impressions, due to thedifferent information processing strategies they recruit.

The primacy effect

In his classic paper, Asch (1946) demonstrated that simply reversingthe order in which positive and negative personality traits werepresented had a major effect on impressions, with early traits having adisproportionate influence. A few years later Kelly (1950) confirmedthat primacy effects endured even after participants interactedwith the

target person. Others, such as Luchins (1958) found that changing theorder of two paragraphs describing a target person, Jim, as an extrovertor an introvert produced a strong primacy effect, and Jones, Rock,Shaver, Goethals, and Ward (1968) demonstrated a primacy effect onimpressions by varying the early and later performance of test-takers.

Why do primacy effects occur? Most explanations emphasizecognitive processes, suggesting that early information receives moreattention, and short termmemory is less cluttered at the beginning of asequence (Crano, 1977). Asch (1946) proposed a ‘meaning shift’explanation based on Gestalt theorizing, suggesting that early informa-tionmodifies themeaningof subsequentdetails. These accounts are alsobroadly consistent with various two-stage models of social judgment,according to which preliminary judgments are formed on the basisearly, easily available cues, and later, qualifying information is onlyattended to in special circumstances, if at all (Gilbert, 1991; Hendrick &Costantini, 1970; Jones, 1990).

These explanations share a common theme: primacy effects occurbecausepeople fail to process later stimulus information as carefully andattentively as earlier information (Crano, 1977).When judges pay equalattention to all information, primacy effects typically disappear, andoften a recency effect is found. In other words, when attention isdirected at all information equally, the recency effect is the defaultoption, simply because the most recently encountered information alsotends to be remembered better (Hendrick & Costantini, 1970). Canmood influence people's tendency to succumb to the primacy effect?Recent evidence suggest that moods can indeed play an important rolein triggering qualitatively different processing strategies that maypromote, or inhibit the degree of processing that otherwise neglected

426 J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 425–429

stimulus information receives (Bless & Fiedler, 2006; Forgas, 2002,2007).

Mood effects on social judgments

Affect is an essential part of how people experience the social world,a fact long recognized by philosophers, artists and laypeople, yetaffective influences on impression formation received less thanadequate attention in psychology. It is moods rather than distinctemotions that are of interest here, as moods typically produce moreuniform, enduring and reliable cognitive and behavioral consequencesthan do more context-specific emotions (Forgas, 2006). Moods arelow-intensity, diffuse and relatively enduring affective states without asalient antecedent cause and therefore little cognitive content, whereasemotions aremore intense, short-lived andusually have a definite causeand clear cognitive content (Forgas, 1995, 2002).

There are two major cognitive mechanisms that are responsible formood effects on judgments: (1) informational effects (influencing thecontent and valence of cognition), and (2) processing effects (influencingthe process of cognition).

Informational or content effects

Moodsmay selectively prime information that is associatively linkedto the current mood state within a network of memory representations(Bower, 1981; Forgas, 1995), and may also influence integrativeprocesses in working memory. Thus positive mood should facilitatethe access and the use of more positive information, and negativemoodshould primemore negative information, leading to a mood-congruentbias in judgments, as confirmed in a number of experiments (Forgas &Bower, 1987; Forgas, 1994, 1995). Recent integrative theories such asthe Affect Infusion Model (AIM) specifically predict that mood effectsshould be greater when more open, constructive processing is requiredtoproduce an impression (Fiedler, 2001; Forgas, 2002; Sedikides, 1995).Such a mood-congruent effect on impressions was also expected here.

Processing effects of mood

Moods may also have an effect on how information is processed, byinfluencing the extent to which judges rely on pre-existing, internalinformation, or focus on new, external information. An integrativetheoretical account of mood effects on processing style was developedby Bless and Fiedler (2006; Bless, 2001; Fiedler, 2001), suggesting thatpositive moods promote more assimilative, holistic and top–downprocessing style, while negative moods recruit more accommodative,stimulus-driven and bottom–up processing, consistent with the adaptivesignaling functions of these mood states. Several experiments nowprovide support for thismodel, showing thatnegativemood triggersmoreaccommodative thinking and the more thorough processing of stimulusinformation, resulting in better memory, fewer eyewitness distortions,reduced judgmental errors and improved ability to detect deception(Bless, 2001; Fiedler, 2001; Forgas, 1998, 2007; Forgas & East, 2008a,b;Forgas, Vargas & Laham, 2005; Forgas, Goldenberg & Unkelbach, 2009).

In terms of the cognitivemechanisms responsible for primacy effectsin impression formation, we may decompose such judgments into apreliminary stage based on primacy information, and a subsequentupdating stage (Crano, 1977; Gilbert, 1991; Hendrick & Costantini,1970). Assimilative processing produced by positive mood shouldselectively promote the kind of top–down, holistic inferences driven byearly information, thus magnifying primacy effects. In contrast,accommodative, stimulus-driven processing recruited by negativemood should result in the more balanced consideration of all theavailable details of the target person. This kind of processing shouldbolster the second, updating stage of impression formation, directingmore equal attention to all information, thus reducing the impact of

primacy cues, and enabling recency effects to appear (Hendrick &Costantini, 1970).

Accordingly, by extrapolating from the affect-cognition literatureand past research on primacy effects, we predicted that (1) impressionsshould be more positive in a positive mood and more negative in anegative mood (mood congruency effect), and (2) the informationpresented first should have a greater effect than information presentedlater (primacy effect). Further, a significant interaction between moodand primacy cues on impression formation judgments was alsoexpected, such that (3) primacy effects should be eliminated bynegative mood, and enhanced in positive mood, consistent with theaccommodative vs. assimilative processing styles promoted by thesetwo mood states.

Method

Overview, participants and mood induction

Participants performed two consecutive tasks, described as twounrelated experiments: an autobiographical mood induction (writingabout a happy, neutral, or sad prior experience), and an impressionformation task about a target character, Jim. Participants wereundergraduate students (N=284) who participated in the study aspart of their course requirements. The design was a 3×2 factorialbetween-subjects design, with mood (happy, control, and sad) and thekind of information presented first (extrovert and introvert) as theindependent variables.

Mood induction

Participantsfirst completed a ‘studyof socialmemories’, asking themto remember, re-experience andwrite in detail about a happy, euphoricor a sad, depressing episode in their past. In the control condition theywere simply asked to describe the area where they live. They had onepage to describe these episodes, taking between 7 and 10 min to do so.The effectiveness of the mood induction was validated in a pilot study(N=90), where participants were asked to rate their mood on 7-pointhappy–sad and feeling good–feeling bad scales. These two scales werehighly correlated (r=.88), and were combined into a single affectvalence measure. A univariate ANOVA confirmed a significant moodeffect, F(2,88)=18.81; pb .01; those in the happy condition feltsignificantly better, F(1,59)=9.32; pb .01, and those in the negativemood group felt significantly worse, F(1,59)=8.41, pb .01 than didcontrols (M=2.55, 3.88, 5.03).

The impression formation task

Next participants completed what they believed was an unrelated‘social judgments task’. They were instructed to read about a character,Jim, and then indicate their impressions on a number of bipolar scales.Following the procedure of Luchins (1958), half of the subjects in eachmood condition read about Jim in the extrovert–introvert sequence, andthe other half read the two paragraphs describing him in the reverse,introvert–extrovert sequence.

Dependent measures

Impressions were assessed on six 8-point bipolar scales, as follows:friendly–unfriendly, introverted–extroverted, relaxed–tense, popular–unpopular, competent–incompetent and self-confident–shy. Thesescales were selected from the person perception literature so as tocover the most commonly identified dimensions of impressionformation, social evaluation, competence, and self-confidence. Thepolarity of the scales was counterbalanced.

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Debriefing

A careful debriefing concluded the study, and revealed no awarenessof themanipulations. Participantswere informed about thepurpose anddesign of the experiment, and care was taken to eliminate any residualnegative mood effects.

Results

The six impression formation scales were first factor analyzed, inorder to create a smaller number of non-redundant measures, and toreduce the likelihood of Type 1 error. Two non-redundant factors wereidentified, accounting for 43.16% and 20.54% of the variance, respec-tively. The friendly, popular and competent scales loaded on the firstfactor, labeled evaluation. The three remaining scales, extraversion,self-confidence and tense-relaxed loaded on the second factor whichwas labeled self-confidence. The six scales were next combined intothese two non-redundant measures, evaluation (Cronbach'salpha=.85) and self-confidence (Cronbach's alpha=.79). The effectsof mood and primacy on the evaluation and self-confidence measureswere assessed using two-way analyses of variance.

Evaluation judgments

Mood had a significant main effect on the evaluation dimension,F(2,278)=5.87; pb .01. Happy judges formed more positive, and sadjudges formed more negative impressions than did the control group(F(1,173)=4.36; pb .05; F(1,168)=3.98; pb .05; M=4.74; 4.10, 3.51),confirming the predicted mood congruent bias in judgments (Forgas,2002; Forgas &Bower, 1987). Further, the order of presentation also had asignificant main effect: Jim was evaluated significantly more positivelywhen he was described in the extravert/introvert order, rather than theintrovert/extravert order, demonstratingaclearprimacyeffect F(1,278)=7.45; pb .01 (M=3.88 vs. 4.39).

Of greatest theoretical interest here is the significant interactionbetween mood and order of presentation on evaluation judgments,F(2, 278)=12.51, pb .01. As predicted, positive mood increased, andnegative mood reduced the primacy effect. As Fig. 1 shows, there was abasic primacy effect in the control condition, as judges evaluated Jimmorepositively in the extravert first than in the introvert first condition,F(1,59)=4.06; pb .05 (M=4.25 vs.3.65). As expected, the primacy effectwas even greater in the positive mood group, F(1,112)=7.02; pb .01(M=5.23 vs. 3.96) (Fig. 1). In contrast, negative mood eliminated theprimacy effect, F(1,107)=.058; NS. (M=3.55 vs. 3.47), consistent withnegative mood triggering a more accommodative, bottom–up andstimulus-driven processing style (Bless & Fiedler, 2006; Forgas, 2006,2007).

Fig. 1. The effects of mood and primacy on the evaluation of a target person: positivemood increases, and negative mood reduces the primacy effect.

Self-confidence judgments

Mood also had a significant main effect on self-confidencejudgments, F(2, 278)=6.51, pb .01. In a mood-congruent pattern,overall happy participants judged the target asmore self-confident thandid sad participants, F(1,221)=4.63; pb .05, but the difference betweenthe happy and control, and the sad and control groups did not reachsignificance (M=4.08; 4.55; 4.92). The order of presentation also had amarginally significant effect: Jim was evaluated as somewhat moreself-confident when he was described in the extravert/introvert order,rather than the introvert/extravert order, F(1,278)=3.12; pb .062(M=4.83 vs. 4.46).

Once again, therewas also a significant interaction betweenmood andthe primacy effect on the self-confidence measure, F(2, 278)=18.43,pb .001, consistent with the key prediction that positive mood shouldincrease, and negative mood decrease the power of first impressions(Fig. 2). In the control group Jim was rated as more self-confident in theextravert first condition than in the introvert first condition, F(1,59)=3.97; pb .055 (M=4.69 vs.4.16), and this primacy effectwas again greaterin the positive mood condition, F(1,112)=5.82; pb .05 (M=5.68 vs.4.55). Interestingly, negative mood reversed the primacy effect, andproduced a trend towards a recency effect, F(1,107)=2.86; pb .086,(M=4.67 vs. 4.12).

These results confirm that the kind of assimilative, top–down thinkingpromoted by positive mood may further accentuate the power of firstimpressions (primacy effects), while negative affect can eliminateprimacy and may even lead to recency effects. This finding is fullyconsistent with the assimilative/accommodative processingmodel (Bless& Fiedler, 2006), as recency effects aremost likely to emergewhenpeopleadopt a more balanced, stimulus-driven processing style (Crano, 1977;Hendrick & Costantini, 1970), known to be promoted by negative mood(Forgas, 1998, 2007).

Discussion

Forming impressions about others is a complex cognitive task. Thedisproportionate influence of first impressions is one of the mostrobust and reliable effects distorting such judgments (Asch, 1946;Crano, 1977). This study presents strong evidence that moods caninfluence the extent to which judges succumb to primacy effects inimpressions, with positive mood increasing, and negative affectdecreasing the disproportionate influence of early information.Mood also had a marked mood-congruent influence, as sad peopleformed more negative and happy persons formed more positiveimpressions. These findings have several interesting theoretical andpractical implications.

Fig. 2. Theeffects ofmoodandprimacy on judgments of self-confidence of a target person:positive mood increases the primacy effect, and negativemood produces a recency effect.

428 J.P. Forgas / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47 (2011) 425–429

Theoretical implications

This study provides the first evidence that positive mood canincrease, and negative mood eliminate and even reverse primacyeffects in impressions. Impression formation can be conceived of as atwo-stage process, consisting of a preliminary stage most likely to besubject to primacy effects, and a second, updating stage, producingmore balanced attention to all information, often resulting in recencyeffects (Crano, 1977; Gilbert, 1991; Hendrick & Costantini, 1970).Positive mood, by promoting the kind of holistic, top–down proces-sing characteristic of the first stage should selectively accentuateprimacy effects as was indeed found here. In contrast, negative mood,by promoting the accommodative, bottom–up and stimulus-drivenprocessing of all target information eliminated primacy effects.

The recency effect found here on judgments of self-confidence isconsistent with judges remembering the most recent informationsomewhat better when processing all information in a more accom-modative, attentive manner in negative mood. Similar recency effectshave been found in the past precisely under circumstances that alsocalled for more externally focused, bottom–up processing (e.g. Crano,1977; Hendrick & Costantini, 1970). Recency effects in judgments arethe result of somewhat better memory for the most recent details, andthis effect is usually found whenever primacy effects are eliminatedbecause judgespaymore equal attention toall information (as a result ofaccommodative processing in negative mood, for example). Thus,recency occurs not because people pay selective attention to laterinformation when in a negative mood, but rather, because in theabsence of a primacy effect remembering and using the most recentinformation is the default pattern, as also found inmany serial memorytasks.

The observed effects are also broadly consistent with other theoriespredicting mood effects on processing strategies, such as Schwarz andBless's (1991) cognitive tuning model, as well as Martin, Ward, Achee,and Wyer's (1993) affect as input model and Clark and Isen's (1982)distinction between mood-maintenance and mood-repair strategies.These accounts have recently been integratedwithin Bless and Fiedler's(2006) model, predicting that positive affect promotes assimilativeprocessing, and negative affect promotes accommodative processing.This account fits particularly well with our findings. The moreaccommodative, attentive processing of external stimulus details innegativemood can explain not only the reduction of primacy effects, butalso the emergence of recency effects on the self-confidence measure.

The present results also extend the growing literature demon-strating the surprising cognitive benefits often associated withnegative mood. For example, negative mood has been found toimprove attention and memory (Forgas, Goldenberg & Unkelbach,2009), reduce eyewitness distortions (Forgas, Vargas, & Laham, 2005),reduce the fundamental attribution error (Forgas, 1998), increaseskepticism and improve people's ability to detect deception (Forgas &East, 2008a,b), and improve the quality of persuasive arguments(Forgas, 2007). These studies all illustrate the unexpected adaptivebenefits of mild negative affect, and support the notion that negativemood typically triggers greater focus on external stimulus informa-tion (Bless & Fiedler, 2006). The present results add to this literatureby establishing that negative affect may also reduce the distortingpower of first impressions.

Practical implications

First impressions are very important in everyday life. Making a goodfirst impression is critical in organizational, industrial and clinicalsettings. Despite growing evidence for affective influences on manysocial judgments (Clore, Schwarz, & Conway, 1994; Forgas, 1995;Fiedler, 2001; Sedikides, 1995), it is surprising that the role of affect ininfluencing primacy and recency effects has not been exploredpreviously. The present finding that positive affect may increase the

impact of first impressions has important practical implications.Increasing people's awareness of such judgmental biases may beincorporated in training programs for personnel selection, customerservice, marketing and human relations professionals who arefrequently required to form quick impressions of others based onlimited information. Conversely, growing evidence that negative affectmay reduce several common judgmental biases, including the primacyeffect, deserves to be more widely disseminated among professionalpsychologists (Forgas, 1998, 2002).

Limitations and future prospects

Of course, a variety of contextual variablesmay qualify these results,suchas thepersonal relevance and salienceof the task, the complexity ofthe information, and motivational influences (Forgas, 2002; Forgas &Fiedler, 1996). As Hendrick and Costantini (1970) showed, primacyeffects can be reduced or reversed by manipulations that direct equalattention to later information. The present results show that negativeaffect may function the same way, triggering the more balancedprocessing of all stimulus details. There may well be a variety of othercontextual variables (such as personal relevance, the familiarity andcomplexity of the task, etc.) that also call for more detailed or extensiveprocessing, and such variables may well override more subtle moodeffects (Forgas, 1991, 1995; Forgas & Fiedler, 1996). Future studies needto explore the role of various pragmatic and contextual influences inrecruiting different processing strategies, and mediating mood effectson the primacy/recency effect.

Future research may also explore the precise processing latenciesinvolved in judgments. If negative affect indeed produces moreaccommodative and bottom–up processing and more attention tonew external information, as the present findings suggest, then onemight also expect such accommodative processing to be associatedwith longer processing latencies. Measuring processing latencies hasbeen successfully employed in past work to explore mood-inducedprocessing differences (Forgas, 2007; Forgas et al., 2005; Forgas &Bower, 1987). It would also be desirable to demonstrate the effects ofpositive and negative moods on the power of first impression in awider variety of naturalistic situations, even though the presentfindings, based on a large participant sample suggest that these effectsare likely to be reliable and robust.

In conclusion, this study was successful in showing that positivemood can increase, and negative mood can eliminate the dispropor-tionate influence of early information on impressions, an effect notpreviously demonstrated. We still know relatively little about howmood-induced processing differences may impact on impressionformation, and influence theprevalenceof various impression formationbiases in particular. In extending affect-cognition research to the newdomain of primacy effects, thesefindings support recent affect cognitiontheories (Bless & Fiedler, 2006), and also highlight the importance ofmood states in increasing or limiting the power of first impressions.

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by a Special Investigator Award and aProfessorial Fellowship from the Australian Research Council, and by aResearchPrize from theAlexander vonHumboldt Foundation, Germany.

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