Being Known by the Company We Keep: The Contagion of First Impressions

The purposes of the present study were (a) to replicate previous findings concerning naive judges' negative immediate impressions of learning disabled children, and (b) to explore whether such impressions were correlated with the impressions formed by other naive judges concerning a second child viewed in a dyadic peer-group interaction. College students were shown videotapes of second-or fourth-grade boys playing either a host or a guest role on a simulated television talk show. One half of the hosts had been identified as learning disabled. Results indicated that while second-grade learning disabled boys were judged as at least as adaptable as and less hostile than non-learning disabled children, the opposite results were obtained with fourth-grade boys. Additionally, a second set of naive judges judged fourth-grade nondisabled children who interacted with learning disabled students to be more socially hostile than those children interacting with a non-disabled host. Reverse findings were obtained for the second-grade children. Mean ratings of the two children's social hostility by two independent groups of judges were significantly correlated.