ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the continuum model and assesses its ongoing viability in light of the research exploring impression formation since the model's formal publication in 1990. It describes the historical context and reviewed the specific stages of the continuum model. The chapter addresses some of its meta-assumptions about situational and individual differences in motives, along with its emphasis on both expectations and information, and its compatibility with both serial and parallel implementations. It examines the model's five core premises, highlights some of the over 300 citations of it in the social-scientific literature since 1990. The chapter discusses some of the model's theoretical meta-assumptions, clarifying where appropriate some misinterpretations of students' positions. It also discusses impression formation in terms of the informational influences of prevailing category-based processes, interpretations of information configurations that guide use of the continuum, and differential attention to attribute information that mediate the processes.
