Paper Summary:

This paper examines how social characteristics are created, defined and learned. The paper explains that when we start interacting with a stranger, we practically construct learning functions for some of his characteristics, and these functions are defined as the social impression functions. The paper points out that as long as the interaction with this person proceeds, we gain more knowledge about him, and that this knowledge is interpreted by us in the form of positive and negative rewards and the more time we interact with this person, the more accurate will be the social impression of each of his characteristics. The paper then looks at how rewards will eventually lead to a decision whether the impression function value of a specific characteristic is above or below a pre-learned behavior threshold. In conclusion, the paper shows that by evaluating social rewards correctly, it is possible to address questions such as "do people tend to better remember impressions that are derived from negative rewards?" and "do people who succeed to get more positive rewards live longer?".

Outline:
Abstract
Introduction
Impression Types: Direct - Indirect
Hypothetical Case Study - Within the Family Circle
Summary and Future Research

From the Paper:

"How do you determine whether a person is kind, intelligent or honest? Why would you reason that a person you just met can be classified to have certain characteristics? Why is someone considered to be brilliant and another one is just "relatively smart"? How long does it take to label a person according to one or several characteristics?
It can be assumed that for each individual there is a subjective definition for all characteristics that define a person. A characteristic is a social measure that quantities a continuous human behavior. Examples include "warm", "clever", "predictable", "frugal", "energetic", "strict", "introvert", "reckless", "quarrelsome", etc. Each one of us has a subjective definition for any possible characteristic. Over our life time we have developed the ability to classify other individuals (and also to classify ourselves) with certain degree of membership by comparing specific behavior patterns to a threshold value that we defined for each characteristic."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Ferster C. B. and Skinner B. F., 1957, Schedules of Reinforcement.
• Kaelbling L. P., Littman M. L. and Moore A. W., 1996, "Reinforcement Learning: A Survey", Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, vol. 4, pp. 237-285.
• Skinner B. F., 1938, The Behavior of Organisms.
• Sutton R. S. and Barto A. G., 1998, Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction. MIT Press.

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