Making a Good (Bad) Impression: Examining the Cognitive Processes of Disposition Theory to Form a Synthesized Model of Media Character Impression Formation

Meghan S. Sanders

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Media Influence and Health Media Studies and Communication Social and Intergroup Psychology

Abstract

For more than a century, social psychologists have examined the result of impression formation, and its impact on other factors. These analyses were based primarily on personal exchanges between real people. Today, we encounter people via mass media as well, but very little media research has examined the cognitive process that takes place when viewers are forming impressions of fictional media characters. The present article reviews a large and complex body of research and theoretical writings to put forward a synthesized model of character impression formation based on Zillmann's disposition theory and Fiske and Neuberg's continuum model of impression formation, arguing for inconsistency resolution as a moderating cognitive mechanism.

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1999Dual-process theories in social psychology 1997The media equation: how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places 2017Human Nature and the Social Order 1990A Continuum of Impression Formation, from Category-Based to Individuating Processes: Influences of Information and Motivation on Attention and Interpretation 1941Human Nature and the Social Order 1946Forming impressions of personality.1961FORMING IMPRESSIONS OF PERSONALITY 2009Media Effects

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