Temporal Patterns of Accuracy Confidence in Social Judgments: A New Method and Initial Results

An integrated, computer-based system was developed to record participants’ continuous judgment changes on a revised form of the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT-15). Consistent with the considerable research on “thin slice” judgments, the mean latency for greater than chance accuracy confidence was just 16 s (median = 10 s) for the ten one-part scenes on the IPT. There was also a clear and strong linear trend for increasing accuracy confidence across the first 25 s of the ten one-part scenes. For the five-two-part scenes, where comparative judgments were required (e.g., which statement is truthful, which is a lie?), no clear pattern of increasing accuracy confidence was found, with mean scores hovering near chance. The utility of the new system for analyzing the time course of social judgments is discussed and the potential reasons for the contrasting results for the one-part and two-part scenes were examined.     

Identifying Mental Disorder from the Faces of Women with Borderline Personality Disorder

Although appearance-based cues can help to diagnose physical illness, visual manifestations of mental disorder may be more elusive. Here, we investigated whether individuals could distinguish women with a serious mental disorder (borderline personality disorder) from demographically- and IQ-matched non-psychiatric controls. Participants rated mentally ill targets as more likely to have a mental disorder from photos more accurately than chance, despite not believing that such judgments were possible. The configuration of facial cues played an important role in these judgments, as interfering with the spatial relationships between facial features reduced participants’ accuracy to chance guessing. Further investigation showed similar results when participants rated the targets for specific mental disorders (borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder) and rated the mentally ill targets as more depressed, angry, anxious, disgusted, emotionally unstable, distressed, and less happy. Moreover, the depression ratings significantly correlated with the targets’ actual depressive symptoms. Thus, individuals may be able to infer aspects of mental disorder from minimal facial cues.     

Another Look at Accuracy and Confidence in Social Judgments

This study examined the relationship between accuracy and confidence on the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT-15). This version of the IPT contains 15 brief, real-life scenes on videotape for which there are objectively correct answers to questions about status, intimacy, kinship, competition, and deception. A total of 241 participants were run in a 2 (high vs. low cognitive demand) × 2 (first impression vs. nonverbal cues strategy) × 2 (sex of participant) design. Overall, no significant relationship was found when accuracy scores were correlated with two between-participant measures of confidence. There was, however, a significant relationship within-participants between accuracy and confidence. Thus, participants' rated confidence for each of the 15 scenes did predict accuracy in judgments about the scenes. In addition, a 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA on participants' transformed accuracy-confidence correlations revealed a small, significant effect of strategy. Specifically, the accuracy-confidence correlations were higher when participants were instructed to attend to specific nonverbal cues in making their judgments than when they were told to rely on their first impressions. Although there were no differences between men and women in either their accuracy or their accuracy-confidence correlations, men rated their confidence significantly higher than did women. The factors affecting the accuracy-confidence relationship and their role in automatic judgments are discussed.     

Assessing Personality Using Body Odor: Differences Between Children and Adults

Many studies have demonstrated that smell is an important sense in social interactions, and recently it was determined that olfactory cues might also convey information concerning certain personality traits. The present study investigated whether personality traits might be recognized using olfactory cues in contexts other than male–female interactions. 75 children (35 girls and 40 boys, M = 8.29 years) and 75 young adults (41 women and 34 men, M = 20.5 years) rated the personality traits of 50 unknown individuals (24 women and 26 men, M = 24.02 years) based on their body odor. The correlations between scent ratings and the self-assessed personality dimensions of odor donors were analyzed. The results show that both children and adults assess neuroticism relatively accurately, whereas only adults recognized dominance. These results suggest that olfaction supplements visual and auditory cues throughout our whole lives, contributing to the first impression accuracy of certain personality traits.     

Mid-Adolescents’ and Adults’ Recognition of Vocal Cues of Emotion and Social Intent: Differences by Expression and Speaker Age

Previous research has suggested that the ability to recognize vocal portrayals of socio-emotional expressions improves with age throughout childhood and adolescence. The current study examined whether stimulus-level factors (i.e., the age of the speaker and the type of expression being conveyed) interacted with listeners’ developmental stage to predict listeners’ recognition accuracy. We assessed mid-adolescent (n = 50, aged 13–15 years) and adult (n = 87, 18–30 years) listeners’ ability to recognize basic emotions and social expressions in the voices of both adult and youth actors. Adults’ emotional prosody was better recognized than that of youth, and adult listeners were more accurate overall than were mid-adolescents. Interaction effects revealed that youths’ accuracy was equivalent to adult listeners’ when hearing adult portrayals of anger, disgust, friendliness, happiness, and meanness, and youth portrayals of disgust, happiness, and meanness. Our findings highlight the importance of speaker characteristics and type of expression on listeners’ ability to recognize vocal cues of emotion and social intent.     

Interpersonal Reasons for Interpersonal Perceptions: Gender-incongruent Purpose Goals and Nonverbal Judgment Accuracy

Women’s tendency to outperform men on measures of accuracy in interpreting the meaning of nonverbal behavior might be due to such measures being more congruent with women’s interpersonal goals than men’s. The present study examined undergraduate men’s and women’s (N = 41) nonverbal judgment accuracy on the Interpersonal Perception Task-15 (IPT-15; Costanzo & Archer, 1993 [.The interpersonal perception task-15 (IPT-15). Berkeley: University of California Center for Media and Independent Learning) when the purpose for using their judgment skills was manipulated to be either congruent or incongruent with stereotypic “masculine” and “feminine” interpersonal goals. Results showed that each gender was at a relative disadvantage in judgment accuracy in the gender-incongruent goal conditions: women were relatively less accurate when they thought the IPT-15 measured judgment skills of use to interrogators in the military, whereas men were relatively less accurate when they thought the IPT-15 measured judgment skills of use to social workers in the social services. Discussion centers on the importance of matching individuals’ interpersonal goals to the purpose goals of the measure when using measures of interpersonal sensitivity.

Development of the Movements Impressions Emotions Model: Evaluation of Movements and Impressions Related to the Perception of Emotions in Dance

The purpose of this study is to specify the characteristics that contribute to the perception of emotions expressed through dance movements and to develop an emotional model to show the relationships between impressions and the characteristics of expressive body movements. Six dancers expressed three different emotions through dance: joy, sadness, and anger. Observers (N = 192) rated both their impressions (33 dimensions) and the dance movements (26 characteristics) of 18 dance performances. The results showed that the observers could accurately perceive the emotional meanings expressed in the dances. The impressions of Dynamics, Expansion, and Stability—and the evaluated movements of Frequency and Velocity of Upward Extension, Frequency and Velocity of Downward Movements, Turning or Jumping, and Body Closing—were extracted via factor analysis as determinants of observers’ impressions of emotional expressions in dance. Additionally, covariance structure analysis and discriminant function analysis indicated that the emotional expressions of the dances expressing joy, sadness, and anger are each associated with particular factors. Through these analyses, we developed the Movements Impressions Emotions Model for dance.     

Hand over Heart Primes Moral Judgments and Behavior

Morality is a prominent guide of both action and perception. We argue that non-emotional gestures can prime the abstract concept of honesty. Four studies demonstrated that the emblematic gesture associated with honesty (putting a hand on one’s heart) increased the level of honesty perceived by others, and increased the honesty shown in one’s own behavior. Target persons performing this gesture were described in terms associated with honesty, and appeared more trustworthy to others than when the same targets were photographed with a control gesture. Persons performing the hand-over-heart gesture provided more honest assessments of others’ attractiveness, and refrained from cheating, as compared to persons performing neutral gestures. These findings suggest that bodily experience associated with abstract concepts can influence both one’s perceptions of others, and one’s own complex actions. Further, our findings suggest that this influence is not mediated by changes in affective states.     

Accuracy and Confidence on the Interpersonal Perception Task: A Japanese-American Comparison

This study compared the accuracy and confidence of Japanese and American participants on the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT-15). The IPT contains 15 brief, real-life scenes on videotape for which there are objectively correct answers about relationships and deception. A total of 344 participants were run in a 2 (Japanese vs. American participants) × 2 (Audiovisual vs. Visual-Only presentation) × 2 (Sex of participant) design. Support was found for the hypothesized greater accuracy of Americans over Japanese, but a Culture × Presentation Modality interaction qualified the main effect of culture. Specifically, Japanese and American participants had virtually identical scores on the IPT-15 in the Visual-Only condition, but Americans' scores increased while Japanese scores decreased in the Audiovisual condition. Analyses of the confidence measures indicated that American participants were much more confident than the Japanese participants, but this difference was larger in the Audiovisual condition than in the Visual-Only condition. In addition, the prediction that women would be more accurate on the IPT, but still report lower confidence than men, was also supported. Finally, Japanese participants with moderate proficiency in spoken English were more accurate on the IPT than those with low English proficiency. The likely processes underlying these differences and the possible directions for future research are discussed.     

The Relation of Gender, Personality, and Intelligence to Judges' Accuracy in Judging Strangers' Personality From Brief Video Segments

Fifty-three men and 56 women viewed brief video segments of 32 male targets and rated them on three personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, and masculinity-femininity (M-F). Judges were assessed on general intelligence, Big Five traits, and gender-related traits. Two measures of accuracy were computed: 1) consensus accuracy, which measured the correlation between judges' ratings and corresponding ratings made by previous judges, and 2) trait accuracy, which measured the correlation between judges' ratings and targets' assessed personality. There was no gender difference in overall accuracy. However, women showed higher trait accuracy than men in judging neuroticism. Consensus accuracy exceeded trait accuracy, and extraversion and M-F were judged more accurately than neuroticism. M-F judgments showed the highest level of consensus accuracy. Judges' intelligence correlated positively with accuracy. Except for openness, personality traits were generally unrelated to accuracy.     

Children’s Scales of Pleasure and Arousal

This article introduces the Children’s Scales of Pleasure and Arousal as instruments to enable children to provide judgments of emotions they witness or experience along the major dimensions of affect. In two studies (Study 1: N = 160, 3–11 years and adults; Study 2: N = 280, 3–5 years and adults), participants used the scales to indicate the levels of pleasure or arousal they perceived in stylized drawings of facial expressions, in photographs of facial expressions, or in emotion labels. All age groups used the Pleasure Scale reliably and accurately with all three types of stimuli. All used the Arousal Scale with stylized faces and with facial expressions, but only 5-year-olds did so for emotion labels.     

Making a (False) Impression: The Role of Business Experience in First Impressions of CEO Leadership Ability

Recent studies have demonstrated that judgments of business leaders’ faces predict their organizations’ financial performance. To date, these predictions have been derived exclusively from the impressions of naïve perceivers. Here, we tested how perceivers’ knowledge and experience in business might relate to their judgments of CEOs’ leadership ability from nonverbal facial cues. In Study 1, business students performed similarly to non-business students when rating faces for leadership ability. Business professionals with many years of experience exhibited significantly lower accuracy than professionals without business experience in Study 2, however. Following previous research demonstrating that experience in a particular domain can ironically reduce the accuracy of individuals’ judgments, our findings suggest that perceivers’ experience in executive business management positions may inhibit them from accurately judging leadership ability from nonverbal information. Domain-specific knowledge may therefore impair the accuracy of first impressions.     

Renaissance beauty = Today’s ugly: What appearance factors determine attractiveness judgments?

ABSTRACT

By comparing photos of portraits of the faces of Renaissance courtesans to photos of attractive contemporary women’s faces this study estimates the importance of sociocultural factors in the personal perception of faces. Physical attractiveness is an important causal factor in choosing a sex partner, so the difference between averaged attractiveness judgments, a focus of attractiveness research, and individual attractiveness judgment, most relevant to choosing a sex partner, is important. Except for modesty and faithfulness, 13 normally attractive contemporary models were rated much more positively by college student participants (N = 189) than were eight celebrated Renaissance courtesans, both in attractiveness (contemporary stimuli 63%; Renaissance courtesans 31%) and in personality traits. All of the Renaissance courtesan trait ratings showed more variability than the contemporary stimuli. This study supports the view that once a relatively low baseline level of biological attractiveness is surpassed, latent and explicit sociocultural factors, culturally relative gender role appearance expectations, culturally relative aesthetic judgment factors, individual differences, and interpersonal dynamics are major determining factors of judgments of pretty and/or beautiful showing large subcultural and cultural individual differences. Pretty and beautiful may be discrete concepts, with beautiful strongly culturally determined. These data suggest that sociocultural and subcultural factors are important determiners of attractiveness.     

Vocal Cues Underlying Youth and Adult Portrayals of Socio-emotional Expressions

Despite known differences in the acoustic properties of children’s and adults’ voices, no work to date has examined the vocal cues associated with emotional prosody in youth. The current study investigated whether child (n = 24, 17 female, aged 9–15) and adult (n = 30, 15 female, aged 18–63) actors differed in the vocal cues underlying their portrayals of basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness) and social expressions (meanness, friendliness). We also compared the acoustic characteristics of meanness and friendliness to comparable basic emotions. The pattern of distinctions between expressions varied as a function of age for voice quality and mean pitch. Specifically, adults’ portrayals of the various expressions were more distinct in mean pitch than children’s, whereas children’s representations differed more in voice quality than adults’. Given the importance of pitch variables for the interpretation of a speaker’s intended emotion, expressions generated by adults may thus be easier for listeners to decode than those of children. Moreover, the vocal cues associated with the social expressions of meanness and friendliness were distinct from those of basic emotions like anger and happiness respectively. Overall, our findings highlight marked differences in the ways in which adults and children convey socio-emotional expressions vocally, and expand our understanding of the communication of paralanguage in social contexts. Implications for the literature on emotion recognition are discussed.     

Subtyping Non-treatment-seeking Problem Gamblers Using the Pathways Model

This study examined whether distinct subgroups could be identified among a sample of non-treatment-seeking problem and pathological/disordered gamblers (PG) using Blaszczynski and Nower’s (Addiction 97:487–499, 2002) pathways model (N = 150, 50% female). We examined coping motives for gambling, childhood trauma, boredom proneness, risk-taking, impulsivity, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and antisocial personality disorder as defining variables in a hierarchical cluster analysis to identify subgroups. Subgroup differences in gambling, psychiatric, and demographic variables were also assessed to establish concurrent validity. Consistent with the pathways model, our analyses identified three gambling subgroups: (1) behaviorally conditioned (BC), (2) emotionally vulnerable (EV), and (3) antisocial-impulsivist (AI) gamblers. BC gamblers (n = 47) reported the lowest levels of lifetime depression, anxiety, gambling severity, and interest in problem gambling treatment. EV gamblers (n = 53) reported the highest levels of childhood trauma, motivation to gamble to cope with negative emotions, gambling-related suicidal ideation, and family history of gambling problems. AI gamblers (n = 50) reported the highest levels of antisocial personality disorder and ADHD symptoms, as well as higher rates of impulsivity and risk-taking than EV gamblers. The findings provide evidence for the validity of the pathways model as a framework for conceptualizing PG subtypes in a non-treatment-seeking sample, and underscore the importance of tailoring treatment approaches to meet the respective clinical needs of these subtypes.     

Personality at Face Value: Facial Appearance Predicts Self and Other Personality Judgments among Strangers and Spouses

Character judgments, based on facial appearance, impact both perceivers’ and targets’ interpersonal decisions and behaviors. Nonetheless, the resilience of such effects in the face of longer acquaintanceship duration is yet to be determined. To address this question, we had 51 elderly long-term married couples complete self and informant versions of a Big Five Inventory. Participants were also photographed, while they were requested to maintain an emotionally neutral expression. A subset of the initial sample completed a shortened version of the Big Five Inventory in response to the pictures of other opposite sex participants (with whom they were unacquainted). Oosterhof and Todorov’s (in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:11087–11092, 2008) computer-based model of face evaluation was used to generate facial trait scores on trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness, based on participants’ photographs. Results revealed that structural facial characteristics, suggestive of greater trustworthiness, predicted positively biased, global informant evaluations of a target’s personality, among both spouses and strangers. Among spouses, this effect was impervious to marriage length. There was also evidence suggestive of a Dorian Gray effect on personality, since facial trustworthiness predicted not only spousal and stranger, but also self-ratings of extraversion. Unexpectedly, though, follow-up analyses revealed that (low) facial dominance, rather than (high) trustworthiness, was the strongest predictor of self-rated extraversion. Our present findings suggest that subtle emotional cues, embedded in the structure of emotionally neutral faces, exert long-lasting effects on personality judgments even among very well-acquainted targets and perceivers.     

Does Prior Banking Experience Matter? Differences of the Banked and Unbanked in Individual Development Accounts

Using data from the 4-year American Dream Demonstration, this study compares saving performance and program participation of banked (n = 1,538) and unbanked participants (n = 466) enrolled in 14 IDA programs. The study shows banked participants had $2.74 higher average monthly net deposit (p < 0.05); 5% higher deposit frequency (p < 0.001); and 42% less odds of drop out than unbanked participants (p < 0.001). Moreover, program characteristics such as financial education, monthly saving targets, peer group meetings, and direct deposit are important predictors of program performances. Individual characteristics such as race/ethnicity, home ownership, and income are significantly associated with program performance.     

Occupational Human Capital and Wages: The Role of Skills Transferability Across Occupations

This paper examines the effect of accumulated human capital, and particularly occupational human capital, on the workers’ wages. Unlike previous studies that apply occupational tenure as a proxy for occupational human capital, this paper applies the concept of Shaw’s (1984) occupational human capital to capture the transferability of occupational skills and estimates a new measure of occupational human capital, so-called occupational investment. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) from 1979 to 2000, the key findings of this paper suggest that occupational skills from the previous jobs can also affect the workers’ wages at the current job and that occupational investment is one of the important sources of wages supporting the Shaw’s original work on wage determination. Specifically, 5 years of (3-digit) occupational investment relative to current occupational tenure could lead to a wage increase of 7.7 to 18.4 %. I also find that the general labor market experience accounts for a large share of workers’ wages.     

Family Functioning and Mental Health of Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Youth in the Trans Teen and Family Narratives Project

Transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGN) youth are at increased risk for adverse mental health outcomes, but better family functioning may be protective. This study describes TGN youth’s mental health and associations with family functioning in a community-based sample. Participants were from 33 families (96 family members) and included 33 TGN youth, ages 13 to 17 years; 48 cisgender (non-transgender) caregivers; and 15 cisgender siblings. Participants completed a survey with measures of family functioning (family communication, family satisfaction) and mental health of TGN youth (suicidality, self-harm, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, resilience). TGN youth reported a high risk of mental health concerns: suicidality (15% to 30%), self-harm (49%), clinically significant depressive symptoms (61%); and moderate self-esteem (M = 27.55, SD = 7.15) and resiliency (M = 3.67, SD = 0.53). In adjusted models, better family functioning from the TGN youth’s perspective was associated with better mental health outcomes among TGN youth (β ranged from ?0.40 to ?0.65 for self-harm, depressive symptoms, and anxious symptoms, and 0.58 to 0.70 for self-esteem and resiliency). Findings from this study highlight the importance of considering TGN youth’s perspectives on the family to inform interventions to improve family functioning in families with TGN youth.