The document is a journal entry by a student describing their first impressions forming experiences at a new university. It discusses several factors that influence first impressions including physical appearance, accent, cultural influences, and halo effects. The student recalls playing memory games during orientation week and struggling due to effects of primacy and recency on memory and impression formation. The document also explains how the halo effect can cause people to make positive or negative judgments about unrelated attributes based on their feelings towards one aspect.

1. SCHOOL OF
ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (PSY 30203)
NAME: LOH MUN TONG
STUDENT ID: 0323680
WORD COUNT: 903
ASSIGNMENT 1: INDIVIDUAL JOURNAL 4
LECTURER: SIR SHANKAR THIRUCHELVAM
SUBMISSION DATE: 30 NOVEMBER 2015
LOH MUN TONG I FNBE MARCH 2015 l SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (PSY 30203) l INDIVIDUAL JOURNAL 4

2. November 9, 2015 6.00pm
Since high school, I have been waiting to enter college. I always wanted to be a
college student, a serious student who would decide what to be in her life. The day
when I first enter Taylor’s University falls on 21st
Of March, 2015. It was a day full of
new experiences. I saw lots of new faces and was unfamiliar with the new
surroundings. The orientation lasted for a week and I’ve given a chance to know
more about my course mate.
I believe giving good first impression is important in order to make new friends as
first impression is the event when one person first encounters another person and
forms a mental image of that person. However, impression accuracy varies
depending on the observer and the target person being observed. First impression
included a wide range of characteristics such as age, race, culture, language, gender,
physical appearance, accent, posture, voice and time allowed to process. The first
impressions individuals give to others could greatly influence how they are treated
and viewed in many contexts of everyday life.
Cultural influences could affect how we see others. Collectivism versus
individualism can influence first impression formation. In this case, collectivists are
at ease as long as their impressions are largely in alignment with the larger group's
impressions. When a collectivist wants to change his or her impression, he or she
may be compelled to change the views of all group members. However, this could be
challenging for collectivists, who tend to be less confrontational than individualists.
Individualists are willing change their own views at will and are generally more
comfortable with uncertainty, which makes them naturally more willing to change
their impressions.
One of the most crucial characteristics of forming first impression is the individual’s
accent and speech. The way a person speak and sound like can influence how people
are perceived by those to whom they are speaking. For example, when
hypothetically having a conversation with one of the course mate with English, we
would know if she or he speaks English often through his or her accent and
pronunciation of the words.
Not to forget that one’s physical appearance would also greatly affect how we
perceive others. Physical appearance gives us clear clues as to a person's personality
without him or her ever having to speak or move. After viewing pictures of people in
a neutral position and in a self-chosen posed position, observers were accurate at
judging the target's levels of extraversion, emotional stability, openness, self-esteem,
and religiosity.The combined impression of physical characteristics, body posture,
facial expression, and clothing choices lets observers form accurate images of a
target's personality, so long as the person observed is presenting themselves

3. genuinely. However, these may not be accurate to the individual’s true personality
and behaviour.
During the orientation week, the students were given an opportunity to know new
friends in the ice breaking games. I remember one of the games was memory game.
We were given a list of items to remember and those who remember the most will
be the winner. I had a vivid memory that I lose this game as I am weak at memorising
things but I still can recall the first and the last few items in the list due to the
primacy effect where the first piece of information received will have the most
impact on my impression and the recency effect where the last piece of information
received will also have a large impact on my impression.
It is really common to see lots of pretty people around campus where they have
good looking features. People tend to associate pretty faces with good attitude and
behaviour which sometimes it may prove wrong. People always assume what is
beautiful is good effect while what is ugly is bad. However it is undeniable that
physical beauty and facial features form our impressions of others. This phenomenon
is due to the Halo effect. Halo effect causes people to be biased in their
judgments by transferring their feelings about one attribute of something to other,
unrelated, attributes. However Halo effect also speaks to the importance of a good
impression.
For example, a tall or good-looking person will be perceived as being intelligent and
trustworthy, even though there is no logical reason to believe that height or looks
correlate with smart and honesty. The Halo effect, however, works both in positive
and negative directions. Why? The reason is simple as if one like aspect of
something, he or she will have a positive predisposition toward everything about it.
In contrary, if one dislikes one aspect of something, he or she will have a negative
predisposition toward everything about it.
Due to the vast development of the internet and electronic gadgets, websites are
impacted by the Halo effect. The Halo Effect can impact organizations, locations,
products and delivery and communications channels, as well as our judgments of
other people. If users like one aspect of a website, they're more likely to judge it
favourably in the future. Conversely, if users have a particularly bad experience with
a site, they'll predict that the site will treat them poorly in the future as well and,
thus, will be reluctant to return to the site. In this latter case, even if the site is later
redesigned to be better, users will still carry over their negative expectations from
their earlier experience.