Forming and Testing Implicit Personality Theories in Cyberspace

In this article, I describe an exercise for Social, Personality, and Introductory Psychology classes. In this exercise, students form implicit personality theories (IPTs) based on information provided by social psychologists on their internet home pages. As part of the exercise, students also compose a personal home page and describe the IPTs that are likely to emerge from the information they present. Students reported that the exercise was enjoyable and enhanced their understanding of the influence of IPTs on impression formation.