2025 Theses Doctoral

Changing my mind: The socio-affective mechanisms underlying impression updating

Silver, Benjamin Michael

How do we change our beliefs about other people? When we learn new information about someone that contradicts what we previously believed about them, we are likely to change – or update – our beliefs about their relevant traits. But when it comes to someone we know well, or have strong feelings towards, or who is simultaneously evaluating us, the situation is more complicated. In this dissertation, I investigate the socio-affective and neural mechanisms that underly impression updating.

In Chapter 1, I analyze social media posts to ask how the general public updated their perceptions of the moral character of public figures accused of sexual assault during #MeToo, and how pre-existing motivations impacted the degree of updating. I find that liking mitigates negative updating for less severe accusations, indicating forgiveness of well-liked others

. In Chapter 2, I again examine the impact of motivations on impression updating, but for the competence and sociability of close others after completing a virtual escape room game together. I find that the self-enhancement bias leads perceived similarity to impact perceptions of competence, while liking impacts perceptions of sociability. Both of these chapters also investigate the durability of an update, and both demonstrate that impression updates persist beyond immediate effects.

Finally, in Chapter 3, I use functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the neural mechanisms implicated after an update occurs in the context of romantic interest. I find that the mentalizing network responds to social feedback, suggesting that romantic interest updates are interdependent with a target’s own evaluations.