The individual's motives for forming a total concept are not entirely clear. There is a general tendency to organize a perceptual field. In addition, however, it appears that the individual attempts to stabilize his social environment by predicting the other person's behavior. His predictions are easier if he has a total picture of what the person is like. The formation of unified impressions is usually based on inadequate or scanty data.
Individuals often attributes to fill in the gaps.
He then asked the students to write their impressions of the person he had de scribed. A researcher must not only examine the environment, he must understand the individual's perception of that environment The perceived person may become less ambiguous when more information is available. However, it is just as likely that more information will merely complicate the problem of maintaining a unified picture. Under some circumstances the individual will simply ignore new information that he cannot fit into a total concept. In two scenes, the woman displayed behavior that was interpretable as sexually promiscuous.