Attention promotes accurate impression formation

Abstract

Objective: An ability to form accurate impressions of others is vital for adaptive social behavior in humans. Here, we examined if attending to persons more is associated with greater accuracy in personality impressions. Method: We asked 42 observers (36 females; mean age = 21 years, age range = 18-28; expected power = 0.96) to form personality impressions of unacquainted individuals (i.e., targets) from video interviews while their attentional behavior was assessed using eye tracking. We examined whether (a) attending more to targets benefited accuracy, (b) attending to specific body parts (e.g., face vs. body) drove this association, and (c) targets' ease of personality readability modulated these effects. Results: Paying more attention to a target was associated with forming more accurate personality impressions. Attention to the whole person contributed to this effect, with this association occurring independently of targets' ease of readability. Conclusions: These findings show that attending more to a person is associated with increased accuracy and thus suggest that attention promotes social adaption by supporting accurate social perception. K E Y W O R D Seye-tracking, interpersonal perception, personality impression, social attention, social cognition | 545 CAPOZZI et Al.

Intrapersonal Behavioral Coordination and Expressive Accuracy During First Impressions

“…This is consistent with our findings that greater IBC variability is associated with being perceived as more engaging, genuine, and likable. Given that greater attentional engagement is linked to forming more accurate impressions ( Capozzi et al, 2020 ), qualities of targets that draw perceivers in could enhance accuracy. That greater IBC variability only enhanced accuracy for high observability items is consistent with the idea that greater attention will only facilitate accuracy for traits that have clear behavioral manifestations ( Human & Mendes, 2018 ) and the multiplicative nature of RAM ( Funder, 1995 ).…”

“…We report all data exclusions, conditions, all variables related to the present research questions, and sample size determinations below. A separate analysis on a subset of the participants used here has been previously published ( Capozzi et al, 2020 ). 1 The analyses in the present study were exploratory and not preregistered and we did not correct for multiple testing; as such, the present results are preliminary.…”

“… 1. Specifically, Capozzi et al (2020) examined how perceiver attentional engagement, assessed with eye tracking, was related to distinctive and normative accuracy, using a subsample of eight targets and a different set of perceivers. The research question and analyses do not overlap.…”

Impression formation and autism spectrum disorder: the role of interpersonal synchrony

“…Third, we anticipated that diagnostic status might interact with this in uence (H3). Furthermore, we observed participants' eye movements to assess whether they focused on the target interactant whose impression they were asked to judge [40]. We considered that diagnostic status might in uence gaze, such that autistic interactants lead to increased xations due to idiosyncratic gestures associated with ASD (H4).…”

Just Be Yourself? Effects of an Authenticity Manipulation on Expressive Accuracy in First Impressions

“… 1. Wave 1 target and observer data were used to address a different research question in a recently published paper (Latif et al, 2022). A different manuscript used a subset of eight target videos as stimuli with a different sample of observers (Capozzi et al, 2020). …”