When Professor Tom Aces a Quiz—Researching Spontaneous JudgmentsDoing the Research series

1 September 2025, by Anna Priebe

Photo: iStock/wildpixel

Even when we just read about someone’ behavior, we often judge within seconds. What mechanisms are at play and which information influences our value judgments? This is what Prof. Dr. Juliane Degner and Jana Mangels (Social Psychology) want to find out.

A few minutes ago, we sat down for this interview. How quickly did we judge each other when we first saw each other?

Degner: Our first impressions are made instantaneously. These are really banal judgments such as “this is someone trustworthy and harmless.” We have also automatically categorized, for example, by gender and age, thereby establishing similarities and differences. The very first impressions form without us consciously having to form them. And we don’t even have to be especially attentive.

Which sources and information do we use to make that judgment?

Mangels: There is a lot of interesting research on how we use information from a given source. For example, that could be a face or voice. There are not a lot of findings, however, on what we do if these impressions are contradictory. It may also be that I have prior information about someone. For example, we exchanged emails before a Zoom meeting that we can use as a tiny indication of behavior. 

Degner: Important additional information is also what we call “residue of behavior,” meaning whatever it is that has emerged in the course of behavior. For example, this could be the room in the background of the Zoom call or a person’s desk. In contrast to appearance, these are actually very good indicators of what a person is like. For example, we rely a lot on whether someone smiles or not. We forget that there are very strong cultural norms about smiling, and most people comply with them. That means that smiling is actually required by the situation and doesn’t provide much information about the person.

Which information interests you in your research?

Degner: One line of research focuses on categorizing, meaning whether I categorize, for example, according to gender and how that impacts how I process other information. There is a strong connection to research on stereotyping and we are working here a lot with faces, but also with verbal information such as names and labels like job titles. Another area of research is making judgments on the basis of reports about other people’s behavior.

Mangels: That is the focus of my doctoral work. My team wants to know whether and how descriptions of behavior such as “Tom wins a quiz” influences the test subject’s opinion of that person, in this case, Tom. Typically that would be that Tom, who won the quiz, is smart. Then we add social categories and labels to find out if the impressions change. Does it make a difference, for example, if Tom is a professor? Prior published research says that this plays a role. However, we haven’t been able to confirm this so far. This is why we are looking closely at the details, at the kind of material and in the tasks; to find out where the effects are.

How do you research unconscious processes?

Mangels: The focus of our research is spontaneous judgments. This means that we assume that it can make a difference if I am asked explicitly what I think of Tom. Theoretically, it could be that I read the sentence about Tom’s quiz success and think nothing further at all about Tom but judge Tom only when and because I am asked to do so. We want to avoid that by measuring indirectly.

One after the other, the test subjects read very different sentences referring to Tom. At some point they are asked whether the word “clever” appeared in their sentence about Tom. They have to decide quickly between yes or no. The correct answer is no but when they hear the word “clever,” it is harder for them to say so because they now already have that concept in mind. We do this repeatedly and with different control words such as “nice.” In this way, we can indirectly conclude what the participants have decided based on the description. 

Degner: The core of our research is really to separate between intentional and spontaneous impressions. Our assumption is that we often judge more spontaneously in our daily lives and only then begin to rationalize. This indirect insight has its own difficulties, however, because it involves a lot of interpretation. We are measuring the pushing of keys and reaction times that we need to understand. And naturally, we need to have a sound theory as to how the results are related to an impression. This is often a matter of milliseconds.

We are primarily interested in social group labels

How do we find the right sentences to test the effect of the descriptions?

Mangels: We tried to use a multi-step procedure to make the sentence as generally valid as possible. Because we are primarily interested in social group labels, our first step was to ask a lot of people about characteristics attached to certain labels, for examples to professors or bank advisors. Then we gave people words like “clever” and asked them what behaviors they imply. At each step, we selected the examples that most of those questioned could agree on.

Do you already know what happens with these first impressions or how they express themselves in behavior?

Degner: There are not too many empirical studies on the relevance of first impressions. The studies show, however, that if I have a first impression of Tom and am asked what Tom probably does in the morning, the answer is generally congruent with the first impression. There is also research that shows that we decide, based on these first impressions, whether we want to engage with this person. But we don’t know much, to be honest, about how long these spontaneous first impressions last and how strong they are. However, research on stereotypes, which is not about individual, behavior-based judgment but about group-based characteristics such as man/woman, familiar/strange, reveals that these judgments can have a strong impact on our expectations.

In your work on the effect of behavioral descriptions, you have not yet identified the effects of such social group labels. Is that a contradiction?

Mangels: No, because our argument is that our research on the descriptions reflect very early processes in the formation of judgment. It could be that stereotypes don’t yet play a great role. But forming impressions is an ongoing process and at later stages, stereotypes play a greater role. For example, when I am not entirely certain what was said about a particular person. 

Degner: From a purely cognitive point of view, this is what stereotypes are used for. Actually, we know that we should judge people based only on their individual characteristics. But if we have too little information, we rely on assigned group characteristics. When I see how Tom behaves, than I can use this information. But later I might forget that or I am no longer certain. Theoretically, I then have to say: I don’t know anything about Tom and I can’t judge. But our brain then tells us: just a moment, he belongs to category A and we certainly know what is typical for that group. With this knowledge, I fill a gap and then I can quickly react to Tom.

How can your research findings be used?

Mangels: We do basic research and want to understand the mechanisms and processes so that we can draw conclusions. Also, even if we don’t know exactly at this point what the conclusions will be, we definitely have starting points for pondering how our knowledge of the way impressions are formed can be used to train judgment. 

Degner: This is highly relevant in many areas, for example, in application procedures and for other HR decisions such as granting promotions. We have to know that there are such processes and with our findings, we can sensitize people to them accordingly. However, one very strong implication of our basic research on stereotypes is also that we need to remove the burden of a fair decision from the individual and their intuition and incorporate that into structures and processes.

If we rely solely on individuals recognizing and avoiding these automatic processes, these processes can actually intensify. It’s not about activating the thought police and controlling the individual’s justified thoughts. It is more about offering supportive processes, for example, providing only relevant information in job applications and blacking out irrelevant information, such as age or a name, that could distort impressions. And clear preparation and criteria for interviews are very helpful. This is the best way to ensure judgments of the individual.