Gender differences in impression formation

This paper aims to highlight the differences between men and women regarding impression formation. It is based on secondary analysis of the data gathered in two previous experiments with similar conditions. However, the hypotheses formulated within this study have not been tested before. The current analysis was conducted on 86 participants, 47 males and 39 females. Their ages ranged between 15 and 32, as they were either high school or university students engaged in a master’s program. Their task consisted of watching a 14 seconds long video of a female confederate reading a neutral text and then evaluating her using a semantic differential with four dimensions: sociability, ethics, power and activity. Based on previous studies, it was hypothesized that men and women will form different first impressions of the actor employed in the movie. More precisely, the majority of the studies undertaken in this area compare men and women’s accuracy scores of facial expressions decoding, yielding mostly significant differences, with women achieving higher accuracy. A small percentage has addressed other aspects of social perception like: personality traits or socio-demographic characteristics, yielding similar results. However, the current experiment failed to reveal any differences between men’s and women’s evaluations. Accuracy assessments were disregarded in this study, since establishing unequivocal criteria for personality traits evaluation is yet to be achieved. The results are consistent with a small percentage of the studies conducted on gender differences in social perception and allow multiple interpretations.