Why Does Earlier Information Shape a First Impression?

Hearing a new colleague described as “intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn and envious” can produce a different impression from hearing exactly the same words in reverse. In Solomon Asch’s 1946 experiment, the group given the favourable traits first generally evaluated the person more positively. Ambiguous qualities such as “impulsive” and “critical” were also interpreted through the overall impression already taking shape. This is commonly called a primacy effect in impression formation.

Earlier information may do more than remain more accessible in memory. It can establish a working frame in which later traits mean either “capable, with some faults” or “faults that obstruct ability”. A 2019 replication also proposed a communicative explanation: listeners may assume that speakers mention the most important information first, so order itself becomes evidence. Several mechanisms can operate together; one experiment cannot show that everyone forms impressions in exactly the same way.

The primacy effect does not mean that a first impression is permanent. Strong and repeated new evidence, longer acquaintance, the purpose of the judgement and delays between pieces of information can all change the weight given to early and late material. Some conditions even produce recency effects. Most studies measure average differences in controlled tasks, not the fate of one real encounter. The useful response is not to reject intuition, but to treat the first judgement as a provisional hypothesis and ask whether later facts are being recoloured by the original frame.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1948550618771003
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14313838/