Perceiver Positivity Differences Originate in Early-Stage Impression Formation: Evidence From a Recognition Task

Individuals differ in how positively vs. negatively they judge others when providing ratings of first impressions. Here, we investigated whether these rating tendencies reflect conscious choices to be polite and benevolent vs. authentic and critical or whether positivity differences are rooted more deeply in basic information processing. To this end, we developed a procedure in which participants first familiarize themselves with vignettes of unknown targets which contain both desirable and undesirable personality information and later complete a surprise recognition task asking whether or not specific traits had been mentioned in the vignettes. In Study 1 (n = 312) participants differed considerably in the valence of traits they recognized as having been mentioned such that some recognized more positive than negative traits and others more negative than positive traits. Participants with a tendency to recognize mostly positive traits indicated greater liking for the targets and were more agreeable, more conscientious, and older. These results were replicated in Study 2 (n = 837). Study 2 further established that positivity differences occurred during encoding rather than recall and were moderately associated with positivity differences measured with a classic rating-based procedure. The present work expands the understanding of perceiver positivity by differentiating between judgment and perception phenomena.