ABSTRACT
The ability to form impressions of others facilitates the selection of appropriate social partners and enables better navigation of the social world. A large body of research has demonstrated that adults readily and quickly form character impressions from others’ behavior. The present chapter explores the question of how adults come to form such impressions so readily and so quickly. We review research consistent with the possibility that precursors to adults’ ability to form impressions are present in infancy. Specifically, like adults, infants form social evaluations after observing others’ morally relevant behaviors. These evaluations privilege the mental states underlying other agents’ behavior, and support inferences about other agents’ likely future social behavior. Thus, tendencies toward impression formation ground humans’ earliest interactions with the social world.
