Sequence of extreme belief-incongruent versus neutral information in social perception

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Abstract
Order of presenting neutral versus highly belief‐discrepant (magical child‐care or deviant sexual practices) information on evaluations of a stimulus person was studied in 570 college students. As hypothesized, neutral preceding belief‐discrepant content created much greater rejection than did the reverses sequence. When the vivid sexual and child‐care messages were themselves paired, order of presentation had negligible immediate effect upon social perception. The recency effects for neutral plus deviant messages were generally maintained after four weeks delay, but an unanticipated primacy effect was found when both deviant (child‐care and sex) messages were presented. Information aimed at fostering cultural relativism reduced delayed rejection to a significant but numerically small extent. The data suggested that stimulus vividness affects social perception, and that future research needs to explicate the relative contributions of vividness and valence to impression formation.

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