How do you start off a class amazingly? If you choose to or need to contact your faculty member before classes start, make sure to do so professionally. Many students are choosing to do that via e-mail these days, and that’s great. This post is going to give you some good guidelines to follow.

First, two examples.

Example one:
From: Student
Subject:

Do we need a book for this class? If so will we actually read it?
-Steve

Example two:
From: Student
Subject: Psych 2301 028 Textbook

Dear Professor Wright:
I am enrolled in your Psych 2301-028 course for the Spring. Which textbooks will we be using for this course? I would like to get them ahead of time so that I can start reading the first required chapter.
Thank you,
Steve

What are the differences between these two e-mails? First, e-mail two looks professional. It has a subject, a salutation, and is signed by the writer. Second, e-mail one doesn’t give the teacher a class to refer to and many faculty teach three or more classes per semester.

As an instructor, I would respond favorably to e-mail two because of its professionalism and my ability to answer it without requiring more information from the writer. Some of your faculty may not even respond to e-mail one.

This brings up an interesting concept within psychology of person perception. When we interact with someone else, research tells us they make decisions about us subconsciously within two seconds of the start of the interaction. Literally, you have two seconds to make a good impression that can color how a person sees you. This initial impression can change, sure, but that change takes a lot of time and mental energy.

So when you are interacting with someone new, think about how they are perceiving you and attempt to manage the impression formation as much as possible. The writer of e-mail one creates the impression of a disorganized and unprofessional student, while the writer of e-mail two creates an impression of professionalism, respectfulness, and conscientiousness. Which do you want to be seen as?

Some individuals in long-term marriages report intensities of romantic love comparable to individuals newly in love. How common is this? Are correlates of long-term romantic love consistent with theoretical models of love? In a random sample of 274 U.S. married individuals, 40% of those married over 10 years reported being “Very intensely in love.” Importantly, correlates of long-term intense love, as predicted by theory, were thinking positively about the partner and thinking about the partner when apart, affectionate behaviors and sexual intercourse, shared novel and challenging activities, and general life happiness. Wanting to know where the partner is at all times correlated significantly with intense love for men but not women. For women, but not men, passion about nonrelationship factors significantly correlated with intense love. In a random New York (NY) sample of 322 individuals married over 10 years, 29% reported being very intensely in love and our predicted correlates cross validated.

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O’Leary, K., Acevedo, B., Aron, A., Huddy, L., & Mashek, D. (2011). Is Long-Term Love More Than A Rare Phenomenon? If So, What Are Its Correlates? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3 (2), 241-249 DOI: 10.1177/1948550611417015

As you are aware, there is evidence that many factors, beside specific therapeutic techniques, play important role in psychotherapeutic process. Such factors may be the therapist’s gender and age, impression formation based on the therapist’s appearance or manners, or the environment in which the therapy or counseling occurs.

Devlin and her colleagues (2009) contributed to the research of environmental factors influencing therapeutic process by examining the number of credentials in the therapist’s office and the potential clients’ judgments of a therapist’s competence. According to prior research, when counselors have evidence of specialized training, through the display of diplomas and certificates, their perceived expertness can be enhanced (Heppner & Pew, 1977; Siegel & Sell, 1978, according to Devlin et al. , 2009). The client’s belief in what the therapist can do is very important for forming a client-therapist relationship, which is often considered to be essential in psychotherapy (relationship with the client is important for counselors, too, even though counseling is usually focused on specific problems and goals, and is shorter in duration).

Two credentials; photo by kevinspencer

However, there’s also an idea that too much display of success or accomplishment can backfire (Ashforth & Gibbs, 1990, according to Devlin, 2009), and that self promotion can be perceived as there’s something wrong (successful professionals can afford to be modest, so if you need to promote yourself, what does that mean?).  That’s why Devlin and her students used 4 conditions – an image of a room with 2 credentials displayed, the same room with 4 credentials and  with as much as 9 credentials, plus a control condition with no credentials. After viewing one of those images, each participant was asked to rate various personal characteristics of the therapist.

Results indicated that displaying diplomas and other indicators of achievement positively impacts people’s judgments of a therapist’s qualifications (e.g., his or her skill, experience, achievement orientation, training, and authoritativeness). A display of such credentials was also positively related to people’s assessment of the energy or dynamism of the therapist (e.g., being active rather than passive, bold rather than timid, forceful rather than forceless). And it appears that even as many as nine-credentials positively impact evaluations of the therapist’s qualifications and energy, rather than being considered excessive.

The inclusion of a control condition revealed that the qualities included in the factor which Devlin named Friendliness (kindness, interest in clients, welcoming, congenial) were negatively impacted when no credentials were displayed, but two credentials didn’t make much difference – there needed to be more than two credentials for a significant positive effect. Authors argued that the display of credentials might be perceived by the viewer (the client) as a kind of self-disclosure, suggesting that the therapist is revealing something of him or herself to the viewer.

“Displaying credentials will not substitute for quality of care, but people do form impressions based on what they see,” Devlin concluded in Connecticut Collage’s news bulletin. “It’s a competitive health care environment, and more attention should be paid to the quality of the physical environment.” So if you were in doubt about displaying credentials out of  concern how your clients would see them, just go for it! If you’re also comfortable with seeing them, of course.

The quality of decor in a therapist office matters; photo by fromtherightbank

Reference(s)

1. Devlin, A.S., Donovan, S.,  Nicolov, A.,  Nold, O.,  Packard, A. & Zandan, G. (2009). ‘‘Impressive?’’ Credentials, family photographs, and the perception of therapist qualities. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 503–512.

2. Connecticut Collage web site/ news:  http://www.conncoll.edu/news/5872.cfm

From Social Psychological and Personality Science

Job applicants are taught to project confidence in interviews, but can overconfidence trip them up and put off employers? For this research participants read application materials to join a competitive swim team in one study, and apply for employment in another. Both studies featured two applicants, one overconfident, and the other more modest. Other participants were introduced to make the hiring decision at two points once immediately after reading the applicants’ self-descriptions, and again after information that revealed over-confidence or over-modesty on the part of the applicants. Other participants introduced to make the hiring decision were asked to make a choice at two points, once immediately after reading the applicants’ self-descriptions, and again after information that revealed over-confidence or over-modesty on the part of the applicants. When they had little information but the self-description of the applicants, they overwhelmingly preferred the confident candidate. But then raters obtained new information that revealed the exaggerations of the overconfident applicant, and the rather gentle modesty of the other applicant. In both experiments, there was a significant shift away from the overconfident toward the modest applicant. Whilst the authors recognize that sometimes overconfidence is helpful—positive illusions about one’s self can contribute to mental and physical health and success at school and finding work. But when overly positive beliefs about one’s abilities meet up with reality, one can lose the respect of others. Positive illusions might be good only when others also believe that the illusions are true.

Abstract

Psychology theories disagree on the most effective self-presentation strategies—some claim possessing positive illusions is best, whereas others claim accuracy is best. The current experiments suggest that the role of perceivers and what perceivers believe has been underappreciated in this debate. Participants acted as recruiters for either a swim team (Experiment 1) or a company (Experiment 2) and evaluated hypothetical applicants who made claims about their own abilities and personalities. Overly positive statements about oneself were beneficial only when perceivers had no reason to believe they were unfounded. In addition, conveying self-knowledge was more beneficial than being modest. The results are consistent with the presumption of calibration hypothesis, which states that confidence is compelling because, barring evidence to the contrary, perceivers assume others have good self-insight. Therefore, to make the best impression, people should be as positive as is plausible to perceivers.

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Tenney, E., & Spellman, B. (2010). Complex Social Consequences of Self-Knowledge Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2 (4), 343-350 DOI: 10.1177/1948550610390965

From Social Psychological and Personality Science

First impressions are important, and they usually contain a healthy dose both of accuracy and misperception. But do people know when their first impressions are correct? They do reasonably well, according to this study. The findings indicate that there are two ways to be right about people’s personality. We can know how people are different from each other, but a good judge of persons knows that people are mostly alike.

Abstract

Do people have insight into the validity of their first impressions or accuracy awareness? Across two large interactive round-robins, those who reported having formed a more accurate impression of a specific target had (a) a more distinctive realistically accurate impression, accurately perceiving the target’s unique personality characteristics as described by the target’s self-, parent-, and peer-reports, and (b) a more normatively accurate impression, perceiving the target to be similar to what people generally tend to be like. Specifically, if a perceiver reported forming a more valid impression of a specific target, he or she had in fact formed a more realistically accurate impression of that target for all but the highest impression validity levels. In contrast, people who generally reported more valid impressions were not actually more accurate in general. In sum, people are aware of when and for whom their first impressions are more realistically accurate.

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Biesanz, J., Human, L., Paquin, A., Chan, M., Parisotto, K., Sarracino, J., & Gillis, R. (2011). Do We Know When Our Impressions of Others Are Valid? Evidence for Realistic Accuracy Awareness in First Impressions of Personality Social Psychological and Personality Science DOI: 10.1177/1948550610397211