Accuracy of perceiving social attributes

Abstract

A wealth of research shows that people can achieve accurate interpersonal judgments of others based on brief observations of their nonverbal cues. Here, we review evidence demonstrating that people can accurately judge others' kinship, sexual orientation, religious identity, political ideology, and professional success from subtle cues in their physical appearance and expressive behavior. Following this discussion, we detail some of the major factors that can influence the accuracy of these judgments. Finally, we end by reflecting on what this research has elucidated about basic processes in person perception and nonverbal behavior more generally. evolutionary fitness (Keller & Waller, 2002). Finally, accurate kin recognition can also advantage individuals to identify other people's kin to ascertain alliances (Cheney & Seyfarth, 2004). Given these benefits, one would expect kin recognition to be accurate and pervasive; indeed, this is so. In one early study, researchers found that people could accurately judge family relationships from short (2 minute or less) naturalistic videos of one to four people based on verbal and nonverbal cues-such as correctly judging that a woman conversing on the telephone was speaking with her mother (Costanzo & Archer, 1989). Brédart and French (1999) showed that kinship judgments could be made with even less information, reporting that people could accurately match children and parents from photos of their faces. Indeed, static facial cues can communicate kinship between grandparents and grandchildren (Kaminski, Dridi, Graff, & Gentaz, 2009), and between siblings (DeBruine et al., 2009; Maloney & Dal Martello, 2006). More intriguing, humans can also reliably judge the kinship of other (nonhuman) primates from photos of the offspring and parent faces (Alvergne, Huchard et al., 2009). People can detect kinship from olfactory cues as well. For example, Porter, Cernoch, and Balogh (1985) found that strangers could accurately match mothers and children from shirts worn while sleeping (controlling for personal hygiene products), but could not match spouses, suggesting that olfactory kinship cues arise from genetic Olfactory cues also predict kin recognition within families. Mothers, for instance, can correctly recognize their neonates from their odors even only 20 hours after delivery (Porter, Cernoch, & McLaughlin, 1983). Reciprocally, neonates prefer their own mothers' breast pad odors to those of other women (MacFarlane, 1975). Moreover, odors allow parents to distinguish between their individual children, and allow children and adults to distinguish their parents and siblings (Porter & Moore, 1981; Weisfeld et al., 2003). Extended family members (e.g., grandmothers and aunts) also accurately judge kinship from odors (Porter, Balogh, Cernoch, & Franchi, 1986). Research has therefore pervasively demonstrated that people can judge their own and strangers' kin through minimal information, reinforcing previous findings that this ability is shared across species (Lieberman, Tooby, & Cosmid...

Examining the consistency of the good target across contexts and domains of personality

“…The broad domain of social attributes contains relatively stable characteristics, including religious identity, political ideology, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, values, attitudes, and kinship. While perceptions in this domain may often contain biases, research has shown that individuals have nearly perfect accuracy when identifying a target's age, race, and sex (e.g., Macrae & Martin, 2006) and can accurately categorize ambiguous social groups at better than chance rates (Alaei & Rule, 2016). In one of the first studies examining interpersonal accuracy of social attributes, Ambady and colleagues (1999) found that individuals could accurately perceive targets' sexual orientation from short videos and still photographs.…”

“…In one of the first studies examining interpersonal accuracy of social attributes, Ambady and colleagues (1999) found that individuals could accurately perceive targets' sexual orientation from short videos and still photographs. Overall, research suggests that the cognitive processes used to make perceptions about obvious discrete social groups are the same processes used to make perceptions about more ambiguous social groups (Alaei & Rule, 2016).…”

Advances in Understanding the Detectability of Trustworthiness From the Face: Toward a Taxonomy of a Multifaceted Construct

“…Numerous studies have investigated the accuracy of perceptions of others’ social attributes and personality characteristics. For example, people can categorize others according to sexual orientation, political affiliation, and some personality traits on the basis of photos or brief videos with better than chance accuracy (Alaei & Rule, 2016; Tackett, Herzhoff, Kushner, & Rule, 2016; Tskhay & Rule, 2013). A related focus of study, which psychologists have approached in diverse ways, concerns whether trustworthiness impressions predict behavior.…”

Who to whom and why: The social nature of emotional mimicry

“…They tell us little about the person or their intentions, unless they are interpreted as an emotional reaction, such as a sign of anxiousness. In contrast, emotion expressions signal a variety of socially relevant information (Alaei & Rule, 2016) and behavioral intentions (Hess, Blairy, & Kleck, 2000). Specifically, some expressions such as happiness and sadness signal affiliative intentions, whereas others, such as anger and disgust, signal the opposite (Knutson, 1996).…”