The Moral Primacy Model

Testing the Moral Primacy Model in a job interview setting, the researchers found that despite planning to prioritize competence over morality when making a hiring decision, impressions changed more significantly upon receipt of new information about a subject’s immorali...

Regarding negative impressions, the researchers found that immoral people are viewed more negatively than people who are unsociable. Negative impressions, however, improved more significantly when positive information about morality, versus sociability, was added to previous negative qual...

Many of us have been there: Faced with an opportunity to make a great impression, personally or professionally, we say or do the wrong thing and feel like we blew it. Whether in a job interview or on a first date, we wonder if we can have a “do-over.” According to researc...

Investigating whether we update our impressions of others by all three factors equally, the researchers had study participants revise their impressions of a person upon receiving new and inconsistent information in all three realms. They found that information about ...

Taken together, research supports the reality that personally or professionally, morality matters. In all cases, information about morality drives impression management both initially, and over time. So despite the accuracy or inaccuracy of first impressions, es...