Affect and Person Perception

Abstract

book: looks at affective influences on person perception / surveys traditional research on person perception, distinguishing between "constructivist" and "mechanistic" conceptualizations / a multiprocess view of person perception is outlined /// [suggests] that there are at least four . . . distinct information processing strategies people employ when making person perception judgments: (1) the direct-access strategy, involving the retrieval of preexisting, crystallized judgments; (2) the substantive processing strategy, involving the on-line processing and interpretation of the available information; (3) the motivated processing strategy, designed to achieve a potentially rewarding judgmental outcome; and (4) the heuristic processing strategy, when subjects seek to simplify and short-circuit the substantive processing of relevant information /// presents a review of an extensive series of empirical studies demonstrating affective influences on person perception judgments (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2002 APA, all rights reserved):