Making sense of other people’s encounters: Towards an Integrative Model of Relational Impression Formation

Forming rapid impressions of other people’s social relations or obligations upon observing their interpersonal encounters from a third-person perspective is a ubiquitous activity of daily life. The psychological properties of this activity, however, remain poorly understood. Above all, it remains to be determined how accurate, consensual, and functional so-called encounter-based impressions can be. To inspire future research on these topics, the current article proposes a new conceptual framework referred to as the Integrative Model of Relational Impression Formation (IMRIF). This model brings together different strands of empirical investigation, and extends traditional impression formation theories, in order to argue that the psychological properties of encounter-based impressions are co-determined by four main attributes, namely content attributes, target attributes, perceiver attributes, and context attributes. Implications and limitations of the IMRIF are discussed with the aim of highlighting what is, and what is not yet, known about watching and judging other people’s encounters.