Impressions Lab

Welcome to the Impressions Lab at the University of Waterloo! Forming impressions of others is a fundamental aspect of social interaction. What do people think about others’ gender, sexuality, race, or religion? Who do people find more or less trustworthy, attractive, or competent?

Lots of elements contribute to these impressions—faces, bodies, clothing, identity, context, voice, posture, and so forth. We form impressions of people near and far, still and moving, facing towards and away from us. Although first impressions are powerful, we also update our impressions of others as new information becomes available.

The broad goal of the Impressions Lab is to conduct social psychological research that expands the empirical and theoretical work on impression formation to better match how impressions are formed in real life. More narrowly, the lab focuses on the roles of dress and identity in impression formation, as well as the processes by which people use dress to construct identity. Visit the Research page to learn more or the Publications page to browse published work. You can also meet the People in the lab—without them, this work would not be possible!