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First impressions: Gait cues drive reliable trait judgements
Abstract
Personality trait attribution can underpin important social decisions and yet requires little effort; even a brief exposure to a photograph can generate lasting impressions. Body movement is a channel readily available to observers and allows judgements to be made when facial and body appearances are less visible; e.g., from great distances. Across three studies, we assessed the reliability of trait judgements of point-light walkers and identified motion-related visual cues driving observers' judgements. The findings confirm that observers make reliable, albeit inaccurate, trait judgements, and these were linked to a small number of motion components derived from a Principal Component Analysis of the motion data. Parametric manipulation of the motion components linearly affected trait ratings, providing strong evidence that the visual cues captured by these components drive observers' trait judgements. Subsequent analyses suggest that reliability of trait ratings was driven by impressions of emotion, attractiveness and masculinity.
... Like in the real world, people encounter others from all walks of life in the virtual environments, forming first impressions (Weisbuch et al., 2009), presenting oneself (Lee et al., 2014), and making trait judgments (Lee et al., 2014;Wu et al., 2021) from multiple observable "digital footprints." Past research has suggested that people form consistent personality impressions of strangers across different situations occurring in the real world (e.g., Borkenau et al., 2004;Wu et al., 2016aWu et al., , 2017, but little is known about the extent Signals and cues of facial expressions and behavior embodied in psychological dispositions (Funder, 2012;Wu et al., 2016b) allow people to accurately judge some dimensions of the big-five traits (e.g., Carney et al., 2007;Thoresen et al., 2012;Back and Nestler, 2016) as well as the extreme levels of the empathic trait (Wu et al., 2016a) and the big-five traits (Wu et al., 2017). Similarly, "digital footprints" such as nicknames, profile images, and postings left on social media embodied in real personalities (Vazire and Gosling, 2004;Marcus et al., 2006;Back et al., 2010) enable people to infer some dimensions of the big-five traits (Tskhay and Rule, 2014;Azucar et al., 2018) and to detect those who are located at the extreme levels of the big-five trait continua (Wu et al., 2021). ...
... The RAM suggests that perceivers are usually accurate in inferring a given trait when they utilize the available cues relevant to that trait (Funder, 2012). For instance, quick gaits (Thoresen et al., 2012) and frequencies of social activities posted on Facebook (Blackwell et al., 2017) enable the perceiver to make an accurate judgment of extraversion. The social relations lens model (Back et al., 2011) also confirms that observable cues displayed in social interaction allow person perception to happen. ...
... This research is the first empirical work examining the consistency in personality trait inferences across realistic conversation and online text-based chatting (through social media WeChat), and probing the process of trait inferences on the basis of observable cues in the two contexts. The findings replicate previous reports on personality judgments in either the real world (e.g., Carney et al., 2007;Thoresen et al., 2012;Back and Nestler, 2016) or online contexts (e.g., Markey and Wells, 2002;Marshall et al., 2015;Blackwell et al., 2017), suggesting that people were accurate in detecting the trait of E. The trait E is revealed in behavioral cues. For example, extroverted people are inclined to speak loudly, which demonstrates social skills and more bodily expressions (Funder and Sneed, 1993); they also publish more social activities on social media (e.g., Blackwell et al., 2017). ...
Past research has suggested that people utilize various non-verbal cues to make personality judgments in either real-world or online environments, but little is known about the extent to which a person would be perceived consistently across realistic and virtual contexts. The present study was to investigate this issue, exploring the extent to which the same target was judged consistently in terms of empathic and big-five traits across online text-based chatting and offline conversation, and to pinpoint how the judgments occurred in the two contexts. In the formal procedure, 174 participants were asked to make trait judgments and evaluate the observable cues about the partner after chatting online and after watching the partner (who the participant did not know was the same person in the online chatting) in a real-world conversation. The results demonstrated the following: (1) Participants made consistent judgments of each trait about the same target across the online chatting and the offline conversation; (2) many cues in each context were employed to drive trait judgments, whereas few cues validly revealed the self-reported assessments of the traits. The results were discussed based on the empirical and theoretical work in person perception.
... It is possible that we overgeneralize emotion cues more broadly, such as linking vocal traits or body posture to the traits of others. For example, traits such as agreeableness and trustworthiness can be reliably identified from voice as well as postural gait, and postural expressions of dominance and submission are recognizable even when viewed for only 40 ms (Rule et al., 2012;Schild et al., 2019;Thoresen et al., 2012). It is possible that postural emotional expressions in particular could be overgeneralized to trait judgments just as facial expressions are. ...
... Both adults and 5-8-yearolds showed similar patterns, suggesting the influence of bodies on trait judgments emerges early in development, although children were not yet fully adult-like. Our results echo recent work highlighting the range of information people use to judge others' traits, including faces, bodies, and voices (Rule et al., 2012;Schild et al., 2019;Thoresen et al., 2012), and suggest that emotion attributions to postural expressions may be one mechanism by which bodies influence trait judgments. ...
Perceptions of others’ traits (e.g., trustworthiness or dominance) are influenced by the emotion displayed on their face. For instance, the same individual appears more trustworthy when they express happiness than when they express anger. This overextension of emotional expressions has been shown with facial expression but whether this phenomenon also occurs when viewing postural expressions was unknown. We sought to examine how expressive behaviour of the body would influence judgements of traits and how sensitivity to this cue develops. In the context of a storybook, adults (N = 35) and children (5 to 8 years old; N = 60) selected one of two partners to help face a challenge. The challenges required either a trustworthy or dominant partner. Participants chose between a partner with an emotional (happy/angry) face and neutral body or one with a neutral face and emotional body. As predicted, happy facial expressions were preferred over neutral ones when selecting a trustworthy partner and angry postural expressions were preferred over neutral ones when selecting a dominant partner. Children’s performance was not adult-like on most tasks. The results demonstrate that emotional postural expressions can also influence judgments of others’ traits, but that postural influence on trait judgments develops throughout childhood.
... In particular, researchers have shown that people respond to computer systems in similar ways to how they would respond to a human, for instance by attributing certain personality traits to computer partners [41,52]. A specific set of characteristics is on the one hand believed to explain the way people respond to others in social settings [47,57], and provides on the other hand an explanation why it influences the quality of interactions [13,47]. As for the question, which personality traits in specific are more desirable in CAs, there is no definite answer to it. ...
... For a comprehensive assessment of individuals, the following five fundamental traits or dimensions have been defined and derived through factorial studies: Conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, agreeableness and extraversion which refers to the extent to which people enjoy company and seek excitement and stimulation [10]. This specific set of characteristics is believed to explain the way people respond to others in social settings, [47,57] and also provides an explanation as to why it influences the quality of interactions between people [13,42,47]. Verbal interactions by means of language can therefore be useful for capturing lower-level personality processes, since language is more closely associated with objective behavioral outcomes than traditional personality measures [7]. ...
Communication with conversational agents (CA) has become increasingly important. It therefore is crucial to understand how individuals perceive interaction with CAs and how the personality of both the CA and the human can affect the interaction experience. As personality differences are manifested in language cues, we investigate whether different language style manifestations of extraversion lead to a more anthropomorphized perception (specifically perceived humanness and social presence) of the personality bots. We examine, whether individuals rate communication satisfaction of a CA similar to their own personality as higher (law of attraction). The results of our experiment indicate that highly extraverted CAs are generally better received in terms of social presence and communication satisfaction. Further, incorporating personality into CAs increases perceived humanness. Although no significant effects could be found in regard to the law of attraction, interesting findings about ambiverts could be made. The outcomes of the experiment contribute towards designing personality-adaptive CAs.
... It is possible that we overgeneralize emotion cues more broadly, such as linking vocal traits or body posture to the traits of others. For example, traits such as agreeableness and trustworthiness can be reliably identified from voice as well as postural gait, and postural expressions of dominance and submission are recognizable even when viewed for only 40 ms (Rule et al., 2012;Schild et al., 2019;Thoresen et al., 2012). It is possible that postural emotional expressions in particular could be overgeneralized to trait judgments just as facial expressions are. ...
... Both adults and 5-8-yearolds showed similar patterns, suggesting the influence of bodies on trait judgments emerges early in development, although children were not yet fully adult-like. Our results echo recent work highlighting the range of information people use to judge others' traits, including faces, bodies, and voices (Rule et al., 2012;Schild et al., 2019;Thoresen et al., 2012), and suggest that emotion attributions to postural expressions may be one mechanism by which bodies influence trait judgments. ...
Perceptions of traits (such as trustworthiness or dominance) are influenced by the emotion displayed on a face. For instance, the same individual is reported as more trustworthy when they look happy than when they look angry. This overextension of emotional expressions has been shown with facial expression but whether this phenomenon also occurs when viewing postural expressions was unknown. We sought to examine how expressive behaviour of the body would influence judgements of traits and how sensitivity to this cue develops. In the context of a storybook, adults (N = 35) and children (aged 5 to 8 years; N = 60) selected one of two partners to help face a challenge. The challenges required either a trustworthy or dominant partner. Participants chose between a partner with an emotional (happy/angry) face and neutral body or one with a neutral face and emotional body. As predicted, happy over neutral facial expressions were preferred when selecting a trustworthy partner and angry postural expressions were preferred over neutral when selecting a dominant partner. Children’s performance was not adult-like on most tasks. The results demonstrate that emotional postural expressions can also influence judgements of others’ traits, but that postural influence on trait judgements develops throughout childhood.
... Past victimization may predict future risk because: (1) being victimized alters the individual in some way (e.g., individuals who are victimized may experience anxiety, and research suggests that highly anxious individuals are at an increased risk for experiencing victimization; Lauritsen and Quinet 1995), or (2) because there is an unmeasured aspect of the victim that fosters their repeated selection by offenders (e.g., they exhibit risk-taking tendencies and/or work in a dangerous profession; Lauritsen and Quinet 1995;Sparks 1981). It has been argued that the delineation of gait behavior in particular, is a key component in nonverbal communication between individuals (Thoresen et al. 2012) and could act as an important cue for offenders (e.g., Grayson and Stein 1981). ...
... Alternatively, it is possible that the observers simply had difficulty ascertaining personality from the point-light footage. For example, Thoresen et al. (2012) found that observers "… make reliable, albeit inaccurate, trait judgments, and these [are] linked to a small number of motion components derived from Principal Component Analysis of…motion data" (p. 261). ...
Research suggests that certain individuals exhibit vulnerability through their gait, and that observers select such individuals as those most likely to experience victimization. It is currently assumed that the vulnerable gait pattern is an expression of one’s submissiveness. To isolate gait movement, Study 1 utilized kinematic point-light display to record 28 individuals walking. The findings suggested that victimization history was related to gait vulnerability. The results also indicated that, contrary to expectation, individuals with more vulnerable features in their gait were more likely to self-report dominant personality characteristics, rather than submissive characteristics. In Study 2, a sample of 129 observers watched the point-light recordings and rated the walkers on their vulnerability to victimization. The results suggested that observers agreed on which walkers were easy targets; they were also accurate in that the walkers they rated as most likely to experience victimization tended to exhibit vulnerable gait cues. The current research is one of the few to explore the relationship between internal dispositions and non-verbal behavior in a sample of self-reported victims. The findings provide exciting insights related to the communicative function of gait, and the characteristics that may put some individuals at a greater risk to be criminally targeted.
... [Oosterhof and Todorov 2008]), linguistic style (e.g. [Walker et al. 1997]), finger movements [Wang et al. 2016], kinematic pattern [Giraud et al. 2015], walk cycle [Thoresen et al. 2012], and correlations with parameters of Laban Movement Analysis [Durupinar et al. 2016]. ...
... Many researchers employ a decoding approach where they capture movement that displays particular aspects of personality and try to distill what factors in the movement lead to this perception (e.g. [Kiiski et al. 2013;Koppensteiner and Grammer 2010;Thoresen et al. 2012]). Other studies (including this one) take an encoding approach, whereby variations are algorithmically inserted and their effects validated through perceptual studies. ...
Applications such as virtual tutors, games, and natural interfaces increasingly require animated characters to take on social roles while interacting with humans. The effectiveness of these applications depends on our ability to control the social presence of characters, including their personality. Understanding how movement impacts the perception of personality allows us to generate characters more capable of fulfilling this social role. The two studies described herein focus on gesture as a key component of social communication and examine how a set of gesture edits, similar to the types of changes that occur during motion warping, impact the perceived personality of the character. Surprisingly, when based on thin-slice gesture data, people's judgments of character personality mainly fall in a 2D subspace rather than independently impacting the full set of traits in the standard Big Five model of personality. These two dimensions are plasticity, which includes extraversion and openness, and stability, which includes emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. A set of motion properties is experimentally determined that impacts each of these two traits. We show that when these properties are systematically edited in new gesture sequences, we can independently influence the character's perceived stability and plasticity (and the corresponding Big Five traits), to generate distinctive personalities. We identify motion adjustments salient to each judgment and, in a series of perceptual studies, repeatedly generate four distinctly perceived personalities. The effects extend to novel gesture sequences and character meshes, and even largely persist in the presence of accompanying speech. This paper furthers our understanding of how gesture can be used to control the perception of personality and suggests both the potential and possible limits of motion editing approaches.
... Experiments at the Newcastle Neuroscience Institute demonstrated that gait is highly reliable in judging personality traits. [28] A research team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University used the Kinect system to discover gait characteristics that may be related to personality. [29] Another team from Changwon National University in South Korea used specific electric charges (GaitRite program) to understand the gait patterns of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality types. ...
Gait is a typical habitual human behavior and manifestation of personality. The unique properties of individual gaits may offer important clues in the assessment of personality. However, assessing personality accurately through quantitative gait analysis remains a daunting challenge. Herein, targeting young individuals, standardized gait data are obtained from 114 subjects with a wearable gait sensor, and the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTl) personality scale is used to assess their corresponding personality types. Artificial intelligence algorithms are used to systematically mine the relationship between gaits and 16 personality types. The work shows that gait parameters can indicate the personality of a subject from the four MBTI dimensions of E‐l, S‐N, T‐F, and J‐P with a concordance rate as high as 95%, 96%, 91%, and 91%, respectively. The overall measurement accuracy for the 16 personality types is 88.16%. Moreover, a personality tracking experiment on all the subjects after one year to assess the stability of their personality is also conducted. This research, which is based on a smart wearable Internet of Things gait sensor, not only establishes a new connection between behavioral analysis and personality assessment but also provides a set of accurate research tools for the quantitative assessment of personality.
... The human gait's kinematic characteristics affect evaluation of interpersonal attractiveness [24,26,27] and of personal impressions, character, and emotion [28][29][30]. In our previous study, we examined gait dynamics from the perspective of expressed, rather than perceived, attractiveness to nd that women's biomechanical strategy for their individual gait's attractiveness involved showcasing femininity, fertility, and youth and that such an "attractive-conscious" gait was perceived as attractive [31]. ...
In our social lives, movement’s attractiveness greatly affects interpersonal cognition, and gait kinematics mediates walkers’ attractiveness. However, no model using gait kinematics has so far predicted gait attractiveness. Thus, this study constructed models of female gait attractiveness with gait kinematics and physique factors as explanatory variables for both barefoot and high-heel walking. First, using motion capture data from 17 women walking, including seven professional runway models, we created gait animations. We also calculated the following gait kinematics as candidate variables to explain walking’s attractiveness: four body-silhouette-related variables and six health-related variables. Then, 60 observers evaluated each gait animation’s attractiveness and femininity. We performed correlation analysis between these variables and evaluation scores to obtain explanatory variables. Structural equation modeling suggested two models for gait attractiveness, one composed of trunk and head silhouette factors and the other of physique, trunk silhouette, and health-related gait factors. The study’s results deepened our understanding of mechanisms behind nonverbal interpersonal cognition through physical movement and brought us closer to realization of artificial generation of attractive gait motions.
... In the paper [32], the authors researched to assess the point-light walkers and ultimately identified their motion-related visual cues. In their research, participants completed personality questionnaires and marked their personality traits as ground truth. ...
... Effective body language reading is preserved in healthy aging, with particular tuning to displays portraying happiness (Spencer et al., 2016). Point-light gait can drive reliable judgments of personality traits such as approachability, neuroticism, trustworthiness, and warmth (Thoresen et al., 2012; see also Pavlova, 2012 on the Russian psychiatrist Pyotr B. Gannushkin who was reportedly able to recognize mental conditions of patients simply by observing their changing outline as they moved about in a dimly lit room). ...
While reading covered with masks faces during the COVID-19 pandemic, for efficient social interaction, we need to combine information from different sources such as the eyes (without faces hidden by masks) and bodies. This may be challenging for individuals with neuropsychiatric conditions, in particular, autism spectrum disorders. Here we examined whether reading of dynamic faces, bodies, and eyes are tied in a gender-specific way, and how these capabilities are related to autistic traits expression. Females and males accomplished a task with point-light faces along with a task with point-light body locomotion portraying different emotional expressions. They had to infer emotional content of displays. In addition, participants were administered the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, modified and Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire. The findings show that only in females, inferring emotions from dynamic bodies and faces are firmly linked, whereas in males, reading in the eyes is knotted with face reading. Strikingly, in neurotypical males only, accuracy of face, body, and eyes reading was negatively tied with autistic traits. The outcome points to gender-specific modes in social cognition: females rely upon merely dynamic cues while reading faces and bodies, whereas males most likely trust configural information. The findings are of value for examination of face and body language reading in neuropsychiatric conditions, in particular, autism, most of which are gender/sex-specific. This work suggests that if male individuals with autistic traits experience difficulties in reading covered with masks faces, these deficits may be unlikely compensated by reading (even dynamic) bodies and faces. By contrast, in females, reading covered faces as well as reading language of dynamic bodies and faces are not compulsorily connected to autistic traits preventing them from paying high costs for maladaptive social interaction.
... Personality traits are closely related to body movements (Koppensteiner and Grammer, 2010;Thoresen et al., 2012). Some studies have shown that agreeableness and pelvic motion, as well as extraversion and thoracic motion, are positively correlated, and conscientiousness and thoracic motion are negatively correlated (Satchell et al., 2017). ...
Personality affects an individual’s academic achievements, occupational tendencies, marriage quality and physical health, so more convenient and objective personality assessment methods are needed. Gait is a natural, stable, and easy-to-observe body movement that is closely related to personality. The purpose of this paper is to propose a personality assessment model based on gait video and evaluate the reliability and validity of the multidimensional model. This study recruited 152 participants and used cameras to record their gait videos. Each participant completed a 44-item Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) assessment. We constructed diverse static and dynamic time-frequency features based on gait skeleton coordinates, interframe differences, distances between joints, angles between joints, and wavelet decomposition coefficient arrays. We established multidimensional personality trait assessment models through machine learning algorithms and evaluated the criterion validity, split-half reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of these models. The results showed that the reliability and validity of the Gaussian process regression (GPR) and linear regression (LR) models were best. The mean values of their criterion validity were 0.478 and 0.508, respectively, and the mean values of their split-half reliability were all greater than 0.8. In the formed multitrait-multimethod matrix, these methods also had higher convergent and discriminative validity. The proposed approach shows that gait video can be effectively used to evaluate personality traits, providing a new idea for the formation of convenient and non-invasive personality assessment methods.
... Despite the absence of many visual form cues (e.g., shape, colour, etc.), adults readily perceive these point-lightdisplays (PLDs) as a human body when the PLDs are dynamic but not when they are static (Johansson, 1973). Importantly, adults are able to quickly extract socially-relevant information from biological motion, such as sex (Mather & Murdoch, 1994), emotional expressions (Atkinson et al., 2004;Volkova et al., 2014a,b) and psychological traits (Thoresen et al., 2012), even in the absence of static and dynamic facial information (Bassili, 1979;Willis & Todorov, 2006). While new-born infants show sensitivity to biological compared to other types of motion (Simion et al., 2008), it is less clear when the ability to identify emotions from biological-motion cues develops, especially when the body expressions of emotion occur in natural settings. ...
Body movements provide a rich source of emotional information during social interactions. Although the ability to perceive biological-motion cues related to those movements begins to develop in infancy, processing those cues to identify emotions likely continues to develop into childhood. Previous studies use posed or exaggerated body movements, which may not reflect the kind of body expressions children experience. The present study used an event-related potential (ERP) priming paradigm to investigate the development of emotion recognition from more naturalistic body movements. Point-light displays of male adult bodies expressing happy or angry emotional movements while narrating a story were used as prime stimuli, while audio recordings of the words “happy” and “angry” spoken with an emotionally neutral prosody were used as targets. We recorded the ERPs time-locked to the onset of the auditory target from 3- and 6-year-old children, and compared amplitude and latency of the N300 and N400 responses between the two age groups in the different prime-target conditions. There was an overall effect of prime for the N300 amplitude, with more negative-going responses for happy compared to angry PLDs. There was also an interaction between prime and target for the N300 latency, suggesting that all children were sensitive to the emotional congruency between body movements and words. For the N400 component, there was only an interaction between age, prime and target for latency, suggesting an age-dependent modulation of this component when prime and target did not match in emotional information. Overall, our results suggest that the emergence of more complex emotion processing of body expressions occurs around 6 years of age, but it is not fully developed at this point in ontogeny.
... Participants are also able to correctly identify emotions (Dittrich et al., 1996;Atkinson et al., 2004;Clarke et al., 2005;Chouchourelou et al., 2006;Alaerts et al., 2011) and distinguish themselves from people they know and strangers (Loula et al., 2005;Prasad and Shiffrar, 2009;Blasing and Sauzet, 2018). Without any other information about the person, participants are also able to reliably infer personality traits (Thoresen et al., 2012), intentions (Sebanz and Shiffrar, 2009), vulnerability (Gunns et al., 2002), gender (Kozlowski and Cutting, 1977;Mather and Murdoch, 1994) and sexual orientation (Johnson et al., 2007) of the PLD. Finally, attractiveness ratings of womenbased walking PLD are highly correlated to those based on videos (Morrison et al., 2018) underscoring the importance of movement in such judgments. ...
Sexual objectification of others has seen a growing research interest in recent years. While promising, the field lacks standardized stimuli, resulting in a confusion between sexualization and sexual objectification, which limits the interpretability of published results. In this study, we propose to use point-light display (PLD) as a novel methodology for manipulating sexualization levels as a first step toward isolating movement from other visual cues (e.g., clothing or physical appearance) for studying effects of sexual objectification of others. To do so, we first developed 8 virtual reality animations varying on 3 dimensions: 1) nature of movement (dance vs. walk), 2) level of sexualization (low vs. high), and 3) animation speed (slow and fast). Then, we validated these stimuli with perception ratings from 211 participants via an online survey. Using mixed linear regression models, we found evidence that our manipulation was successful: while participants took longer, were less accurate, and less confident in their response when confronted with a dancing, sexualized PLD, they also rated it as significantly more sexualized. This latter effect was stronger for participants perceiving a woman dancing compared to participants who perceived other genders. Overall, participants who reported more frequent sexual objectification behaviors also perceived the animations as more sexualized. Taken together, these results suggest that sexual suggestiveness can be manipulated by rather simple movement cues, thus validating the use of PLD as a stepping stone to systematically study processes of sexual objectification. From there, it is now possible to manipulate other variables more precisely during immersions in virtual reality, whether by adding a skin to the animated skeleton, by situating the PLD into different context, by varying the amplitude and the nature of the movements, or by modifying the context of the virtual environment.
... Despite the absence of many visual form cues (e.g., shape, colour, etc.), adults readily perceive these point-light-displays (PLDs) as a human body when the PLDs are dynamic but not when they are static (Johansson, 1973). Importantly, adults are able to quickly extract socially-relevant information from biological motion, such as sex (Mather & Murdoch, 1994), emotional expressions (Atkinson et al., 2004;Volkova et al., 2014a, b) and psychological traits (Thoresen et al., 2012), even in the absence of static and dynamic facial information (Bassili, 1979;Willis & Todorov, 2006). While new-born infants show sensitivity to biological compared to other types of motion (Simion et al., 2008), it is less clear when the ability to identify emotions from biological-motion cues develops. ...
Body movements provide a rich source of emotional information during social interactions.
Although the ability to perceive biological-motion cues related to those movements begins
to develop in infancy, processing those cues to identify emotions likely continues to develop
into childhood. Previous studies use posed or exaggerated body movements, which may not
reflect the kind of body expressions children experience. The present study used an event-
related potential (ERP) priming paradigm to investigate the development of emotion
recognition from more naturalistic body movements. Point-light displays of human adult
bodies spontaneously expressing happy or angry emotional movements were used as prime
stimuli, while audio recordings of the words “happy” and “angry” spoken with an
emotionally neutral prosody were used as targets. We recorded the ERPs time-locked to the
onset of the auditory target from 3- and 6-year-old children, and compared amplitude and
latency of the N300 and N400 responses between the two age groups in the different prime-
target conditions. Three-year-old children showed an interaction between the prime and
target for the N400 amplitude, suggesting that they were sensitive to the emotional
congruency between body movements and words. Six-year-old children did not show this
congruency effect; however, they had earlier N300 and N400 latency than the younger
children, suggesting that older children may process the stimuli more quickly. Overall, our
results suggest that both age groups can use naturalistic body movements to identify
emotions, with developmental changes in how quickly emotional information from such
body expressions are processed.
... There is evidence for a positive relationship between men's risk-taking behavior and women's assessments of men's dance attractiveness (Hugill, Fink, Neave, Besson, & Bunse, 2011). Other research on dance and personality characteristics showed that women were not able to accurately assess men's personality from their dance movements (Weege, Barges, Pham, Shackelford, & Fink, 2015)-a result that corroborates research investigating relationships of self-reported personality with observer-reports of personality based on gait (Thoresen, Vuong, & Atkinson, 2012). However, a negative correlation of men's (self-reported) neuroticism with women's assessments of their dance attractiveness suggested that certain kinematic characteristics (speed, amplitude, and velocity) might affect perceptions of dance such that people who associate elements of dance performance with desirable personality traits also rate that dance as more attractive. ...
Dance is ubiquitous among humans and has received attention from several disciplines. Ethnographic documentation suggests that dance has a signaling function in social interaction. It can influence mate preferences and facilitate social bonds. Research has provided insights into the proximate mechanisms of dance, individually or when dancing with partners or in groups. Here, we review dance research from an evolutionary perspective. We propose that human dance evolved from ordinary (non-communicative) movements to communicate socially relevant information accurately. The need for accurate social signaling may have accompanied increases in group size and population density. Because of its complexity in production and display, dance may have evolved as a vehicle for expressing social and cultural information. Mating-related qualities and motives may have been the predominant information derived from individual dance movements, whereas group dance offers the opportunity for the exchange of socially relevant content, for coordinating actions among group members, for signaling coalitional strength, and for stabilizing group structures. We conclude that, despite the cultural diversity in dance movements and contexts, the primary communicative functions of dance may be the same across societies.
... There is evidence that the visual features of a PLW can be processed. For example, several psychophysics studies have revealed that the human visual system has a unique capacity for retrieving person-related information from a human PLW such as gender (Cutting, 1978;Davis and Gao, 2004;Mather and Murdoch, 1994;Pollick et al., 2005;Troje, 2002; van der Zwan and Herbert, 2012), person identification Troje et al., 2005;Westhoff and Troje, 2007), familiarity (Cutting and Kozlowski, 1977), self-other distinction (Jokisch et al., 2006), age (Montepare and Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988), personality trait (Thoresen et al., 2012), emotion (Chouchourelou et al., 2006;Ikeda and Watanabe, 2009;Lee and Kim, 2017;Spencer et al., 2016;Troje, 2002), biomechanical constraints (Jacobs et al., 2004), and facing direction (Manera et al., 2012;Schouten et al., 2011;Sweeny et al., 2012;Van de Cruys et al., 2013;Vanrie and Verfaillie, 2006). Regarding the roles of top-down and bottom-up attention, several psychophysics studies have demonstrated that the role of top-down modulation and bottom-up processing in the detection of a human PLW depends on stimulus and task (Bosbach et al., 2004;Cavanagh et al., 2001;Mather et al., 1992;Thornton et al., 1998;Thornton et al., 2002;Thornton and Vuong, 2004;Vanrie and Verfaillie, 2006). ...
Perception, identification, and understanding of others' actions from motion information are vital for our survival in the social world. A breakthrough in the understanding of action perception was the discovery that our visual system is sensitive to human action from the sparse motion input of only a dozen point lights, a phenomenon known as biological motion (BM) processing. Previous psychological and computational models cannot fully explain the emerging evidence for the existence of BM processing during early ontogeny. Here, we propose a two-process model of the mechanisms underlying BM processing. We hypothesize that the first system, the 'Step Detector,' rapidly processes the local foot motion and feet-below-the-body information that is specific to vertebrates, is less dependent on postnatal learning, and involves subcortical networks. The second system, the 'Bodily Action Evaluator,' slowly processes the fine global structure-from-motion, is specific to conspecific, and dependent on gradual learning processed in cortical networks. This proposed model provides new insight into research on the development of BM processing.
... Using the zero-acquaintance procedure, where the perceiver is asked about a target's psychological traits neither with acquaintance nor prior knowledge (Albright et al., 1988;Norman & Goldberg, 1966), a large number of studies have revealed above-chance levels of accuracy in judging some aspects of the big-five personality dimensions (Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness to Experience (O), Agreeableness (A) and Conscientiousness (C)) in a wide variety of contexts (Back & Nestler, 2016) ranging from physical appearance (Naumann, Vazire, Rentfrow, & Gosling, 2009) to short samples of behaviour (e.g. Borkenau et al., 2004;Carney et al., 2007;Thoresen et al., 2012). After observing 'thin slices' of behaviour (occupying less than 5 min, Ambady et al., 2000), sampled from mundane activities, such as reading aloud a standard text (Borkenau & Liebler, 1992, 1993, performing an unstructured dyadic interaction (Carney et al., 2007), singing a song or doing a self-introduction and so forth (Borkenau et al., 2004), perceivers can draw somewhat accurate inferences about E and C across different contexts but their performance in inferring the other three big-five dimensions seems to be inconsistent across different studies (e.g. ...
This research explores the possibility that a person's (perceiver's) prospects of making a correct inference of another person's (target's) inner states depends on the personal characteristics of the target, potentially relating to how readable they are. Twenty-seven targets completed the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and were classified as having low, average or high EQ. They were unobtrusively videoed while thinking of an event of happiness, gratitude, anger and sadness. After observing targets thinking of such a past event, fifty-two perceivers (participants) in Study 1 were asked to infer what the target was thinking, and fifty perceivers in Study 2 were asked to rate the target's expression – positive or negative. Results suggested that (1) perceivers' accuracy in detecting targets' thoughts depended on which EQ group the target belonged to, and (2) target readability is not a proxy measure for level of target expressiveness. In other words, something about EQ status renders targets more or less easy to read in a way that is not simply explained by expressive people being more readable. We conclude with discussion of the importance of the target's trait as well as situation they experience in determining how accurately a perceiver might infer their inner states.
... In Surveillance, body movement is a channel readily available to observers and allows judgments to be made since facial and body appearances are less visible. Atkinson [80] suggested that motion cues were related to personality traits and subsequent analysis suggested that reliability of trait ratings was driven by impressions of emotion, attractiveness and masculinity. ...
Loitering analytics is widely explored nowadays since it anticipates crimes by identifying suspicious behavioural pattern displayed by offenders and reacts to the circumstances without delay. The challenge in loitering detection lies in effective discrimination of the behavioural pattern of offensive loiter and innocuous loiter. In this paper, certain embodiments were proposed with dense trajectory features representing human gait parameters since, many of the Personality traits are manifested in it. Here, frame differencing of effectively represented frames by wavelet transform is used for moving blob detection. With the prior model developed from benchmark datasets using co-occurrence features, the motion blobs were classified as pedestrian or other moving objects using SVM classifier. Short term biometric features like the clothing colour and texture are successfully used to track the person in successive frames. Since the perceiver can make judgment on the target within 10 s under unacquainted condition, here short sequences of frames representing 10 s of video is used for processing. For the short sequence, data association matrix relating the frame number and the associated pedestrians in each frame based on minimum Euclidean distance is proposed. Missing tracks due to occlusion can be effectively handled by a completely unsupervised system using the proposed data association matrix. From the developed matrix the person staying in the Region of Interest for a long duration is identified and behavioural cues displayed by the person are extracted. Here, the spatio- temporal features extracted from Dense Trajectories and Motion Boundary Descriptors from the pre-learned model is used to characterize the person as loiter or not. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, PETS 2006, PETS 2007 and PETS 2016 datasets were used and the experiments show promising results comparable with the state of art techniques.
... Spatial perturbations can simply consist of showing the PLD using an unnatural orientation (e.g., Simion et al., 2008;Sumi, 1984;Verfaillie, 2000), playing it backward (e.g., or with shifting dots along the articulated limbs (e.g., Beintema & Lappe, 2002). Spatial transformations can also consist to average some PLDs with spatio-temporal morphing (e.g., Jastorff, Kourtzi, & Giese, 2006;Thoresen et al., 2012;Troje, 2002). Finally, it is possible to disturb the spatial coherence of the animation by scrambling the positions of the joints (Bscrambled motions^; e.g., Bidet-Ildei et al., 2014;Hiris, 2007;Simion et al., 2008), by using temporal or spatial bubbles (Thurman & Grossman, 2008), or by using pair-wise motions that preserve the local pendular movements associated with individual limbs (Kim, Jung, Lee, & Blake, 2015). ...
The study of biological point-light displays (PLDs) has fascinated researchers for more than 40 years. However, the mechanisms underlying PLD perception remain unclear, partly due to difficulties with precisely controlling and transforming PLD sequences. Furthermore, little agreement exists regarding how transformations are performed. This article introduces a new free-access program called PLAViMoP (Point-Light Display Visualization and Modification Platform) and presents the algorithms for PLD transformations actually included in the software. PLAViMoP fulfills two objectives. First, it standardizes and makes clear many classical spatial and kinematic transformations described in the PLD literature. Furthermore, given its optimized interface, PLAViMOP makes these transformations easy and fast to achieve. Overall, PLAViMoP could directly help scientists avoid technical difficulties and make possible the use of PLDs for nonacademic applications.
... These judgments show high inter-rater agreement, and in some cases, significant accuracy (Gray, 2008). However, some traits, such as extraversion, do not demonstrate strong accuracy (Olivola & Todorov, 2010;Thoresen, Vuong, & Atkinson, 2012). Thus, it is unclear whether behavioral traits such as cannabis use could be accurately judged based upon appearance alone, although one study found that raters guessed individuals' general substance use based upon appearance with 60% accuracy (Olivola & Todorov, 2010). ...
Objective:
With increasing legalization of medicinal and recreational cannabis, use is on the rise. Research suggests individuals may be able to guess cannabis user status based upon appearance; however, these findings utilized a small sample of photographs that was not balanced on user status or gender. Further, no studies examined whether raters with cannabis experience are better at judging others' cannabis use, or what physical features they use to make these judgments. This study explored these factors using a larger, balanced photograph database.
Method:
An American sample (n = 249, 48.6% female, mean age = 35.19 years) rated 36 photographs (18 cannabis users, 18 nonusers) balanced on gender and age on the likelihood that the photographed individuals use cannabis, producing 8964 ratings. Respondents also reported physical features considered in their ratings, as well as their own cannabis use history.
Results:
As hypothesized, photographs of users received higher ratings on the Marijuana Use Likelihood Index relative to nonusers. Further, results revealed a gender by rater user status interaction, indicating that raters with no previous cannabis experience rated males higher than females, while raters with cannabis experience did not demonstrate this rating discrepancy. Cannabis use explained over 9% of the variance in ratings across all photographs.
Conclusions:
Results suggest individuals do rate cannabis users as more likely to be users, relative to nonusers, based upon appearance alone. These findings have important implications, not only for research on chronic cannabis use effects, but also for social and achievement factors such as potential stigma.
... Using the zero-acquaintance procedure, where the perceiver is asked about a target's psychological traits neither with acquaintance nor prior knowledge (Albright et al., 1988;Norman & Goldberg, 1966), a large number of studies have revealed above-chance levels of accuracy in judging some aspects of the big-five personality dimensions (Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), Openness to Experience (O), Agreeableness (A) and Conscientiousness (C)) in a wide variety of contexts (Back & Nestler, 2016) ranging from physical appearance (Naumann, Vazire, Rentfrow, & Gosling, 2009) to short samples of behaviour (e.g. Borkenau et al., 2004;Carney et al., 2007;Thoresen et al., 2012). After observing 'thin slices' of behaviour (occupying less than 5 min, Ambady et al., 2000), sampled from mundane activities, such as reading aloud a standard text (Borkenau & Liebler, 1992, 1993, performing an unstructured dyadic interaction (Carney et al., 2007), singing a song or doing a self-introduction and so forth (Borkenau et al., 2004), perceivers can draw somewhat accurate inferences about E and C across different contexts but their performance in inferring the other three big-five dimensions seems to be inconsistent across different studies (e.g. ...
Trait inferences occur routinely and rapidly during social interaction, sometimes based on scant or fleeting information. In this research, participants (perceivers) made inferences of targets’ big-five traits after briefly watching or listening to an unfamiliar target (a third party) performing various mundane activities (telling a scripted joke or answering questions about him/herself or reading aloud a paragraph of promotional material). Across three studies, when perceivers judged targets to be either low or high in one or more dimensions of the big-five traits they tended to be correct, but they did not tend to be correct when they judged targets as average. Such inferences seemed to vary in effectiveness across different trait dimensions and depending on whether the target’s behavior was presented either in a video with audio, a silent video or just in an audio track – perceivers generally were less often correct when they judged targets as average in each of the big-five traits across various information channels (videos with audio, silent videos and audios). Study 3 replicated these findings in a different culture. We conclude with discussion of the scope and the adaptive value of this trait inferential ability.
... In face-toface interactions, visual cues usually receive higher priority, even if exposed to for just a brief moment (Willis & Todorov, 2006). In fact, a one second glimpse is long enough for us to form an impression (Thoresen, Vuong, & Atkinson, 2012), and that visual cue can determine whether the impression is positive or negative (Milyavskaya, Reoch, Koestner, & Losier, 2010). Even if we spend more time reading than looking at a picture, we often remember visual information more clearly (Shepard, 1967). ...
The existing literature presents ambivalent evidence regarding the significance of visual cues, as opposed to textual cues, in the process of impression formation. While visual information may have a strong effect due to its vividness and immediate absorption, textual information might be more powerful due to its solid, unambiguous nature. This debate is particularly relevant in the context of online social networks, whose users share textual and visual elements. To explore our main research question, “Which elements of one’s Facebook profile have a more significant influence on impression formation of extroversion—pictures or texts?” we conducted two complementary online experiments, manipulating visual and textual cues inside and outside the context of Facebook. We then attempted to identify the relevant underlying mechanisms in impression formation. Our findings indicate that textual cues play a more dominant role online, whether via Facebook or not, supporting assertions of a new-media literacy that is text based. Additionally, we found the participants’ level of need for cognition influenced the effect such that individuals with a high need for cognition placed more emphasis on textual cues. The number of “likes” was also a significant predictor of perceptions of the individuals’ social orientation, especially when the other cues were ambiguous.
... Personality trait judgments based upon appearance are made in 100 milliseconds or less (Todorov, Pakrashi, & Oosterhof, 2009;Willis & Todorov, 2006), but the accuracy is variable depending upon the trait being judged (Gray, 2008). For example, while individuals are generally inaccurate when judging personality traits such as conscientiousness or adventurousness (e.g., Albright, Kenny, & Malloy, 1988;Thoresen, Vuong, & Atkinson, 2012), there is some evidence that behavioral traits such as substance use (Olivola & Todorov, 2010) or even cannabis use status specifically (Hirst et al., 2016) can be accurately guessed. Hirst et al. (2016) investigated the presence of a "jay-dar" (i.e., the ability to detect whether an individual smokes marijuana joints, or "jays"), similar to the "gay-dar" shown in other research (Shelp, 2003). ...
With increasing legalization of cannabis, global use has risen. While individuals may choose not to disclose cannabis use, if others can accurately guess based upon appearance there may be negative implications given common stereotypes about cannabis effects on cognition, particularly memory. This study examined (1) the ability of individuals to discriminate between cannabis users and non-users based upon appearance and (2) the relationship between ratings of Perceived Memory Performance and actual or perceived cannabis use. In Study 1, undergraduates (N = 244) rated photographs on the likelihood that the individuals use cannabis. As hypothesized, photographs of users received higher ratings than non-users. In Study 2, a separate group of undergraduates (N = 218) rated the photos as to how well they thought each individual would perform on a learning and memory test. While actual user status was unrelated to Perceived Memory Performance, perceived user status negatively related to Perceived Memory Performance. Results suggest cannabis users are rated as more likely to be users than non-users, based upon appearance. Further, results suggest a stereotype of memory deficits against individuals who “look like” cannabis users. These findings have important implications for potential stigma, as well as for research on cannabis use effects.
... Blindfolded, earplugged raters made social judgments about the body odor of an unknown donor, seated beside them for 1 min. We chose to use blindfolds and earplugs in order to maximize our participants' focus on olfactory information and minimize perceptual biases from visual information, which has been shown to influence first impressions (Willis and Todorov 2006;Günaydin et al. 2012;Tabak and Zayas 2012) and auditory information, which we were concerned would reveal information about gait, body weight, or other non-olfactory characteristics which might bias social judgments (Butler et al. 1993;Thoresen et al. 2012). In addition, the use of these tools allowed us to include an important experimental design feature: although raters judged between 4 and 10 different donors, we led them to believe they were judging twice as many unique donors. ...
How does a person's smell affect others' impressions of them? Most body odor research asks perceivers to make social judgments based on armpit sweat without perfume or deodorant, presented on t-shirts. Yet, in real life, perceivers encounter fragranced body odor, on whole bodies. Our "raters" wore blindfolds and earplugs and repeatedly smelled same-sex "donors" in live interactions. In one condition, donors wore their normal deodorant and perfume ("diplomatic" odor) while in the other condition, donors were asked to avoid all outside fragrance influences ("natural" odor). We assessed the reliability of social judgments based on such live interactions, and the relationships between live judgments and traditional t-shirt based judgments, and between natural- and diplomatic odor-based judgments. Raters' repeated live social judgments (e.g., friendliness, likeability) were highly consistent for both diplomatic and natural odor, and converged with judgments based on t-shirts. However, social judgments based on natural odor did not consistently predict social judgments based on diplomatic odor, suggesting that natural and diplomatic body odor may convey different types of social information. Our results provide evidence that individuals can perceive reliable, meaningful social olfactory signals from whole bodies, at social distances, regardless of the presence or absence of perfume. Importantly, however, the social value of these signals is modified by the addition of exogenous fragrances. Further, our focus on judgments in same-sex dyads suggests that these olfactory cues hold social value in non-mating contexts. We suggest that future research employ more ecologically relevant methods.
... Applying the "point -light" technique and other methods of capturing or describing movements has revealed that motion patterns created by a wide range of human behaviours such as walking, dancing, and gesturing are carriers of social information. For instance, human gait and simple arm movements appear to contain enough variation to inform about emotional states and personality [10][11][12]. People are able to recognize emotions in body movements that are displayed by actors [13][14][15][16] and ascribe different intentions and interpersonal qualities to actors' displays of hero or villain like body movements [17]. ...
People ascribe purposeful behaviour to the movements of artificial objects and social qualities to human body motion. We investigated how people associate simple motion cues with social categories. For a first rating-experiment we converted the body movements of speakers into stick-figure animations; for a second rating-experiment we used animations of one single dot. Rating-experiments were “reversed” because we asked participants to alter the movements (i.e., vertical amplitude, horizontal amplitude, and velocity) of the stimuli according to different instructions (e.g., create a stimulus of high dominance). Participants equipped stick figures and dot animations with expansive movements to represent high dominance. Expansive and fast movements (i.e., high velocity) were mainly associated with high aggressiveness. Fast movements were also associated with low friendliness, low trustworthiness, and low competence. Overall, patterns found for stick figure and dot animations were similar indicating that certain motion cues convey social information even when only a dot and no body form is visible. The “reverse approach” we propose here makes the impact of different components directly observable. The data generated by this method offers better insights into the interplay of these components and the ways in which they form meaningful patterns. The proposed method can be extended to other types of nonverbal cues and a variety of social categories.
Mate choice, and sex differences in romantic behaviours, represented one of the first major applications of evolutionary biology to human behaviour. This paper reviews Darwinian approaches to heterosexual mate assessment based on physical characteristics, placing the literature in its historical context (1871-1979), before turning (predominantly) to psychological research on attractiveness judgements based on physical characteristics. Attractiveness is consistently inferred across multiple modalities, with biological theories explaining why we differentiate certain individuals, on average, from others. Simultaneously, it is a judgement that varies systematically in light of our own traits, environment, and experiences. Over 30 years of research has generated robust effects alongside reasons to be humble in our lack of understanding of the precise physiological mechanisms involved in mate assessment. This review concludes with three questions to focus attention in further research, and proposes that our romantic preferences still provide a critical window into the evolution of human sexuality.
Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia encounter significant challenges in their daily social interactions. These deficits emphasize neurocognitive disabilities, impaired social cognition, and stigma. However, social presentation especially public perception of patients’ social behavior has been poorly studied to date in this mental disorder despite the fundamental importance of first impression in human interaction. This study aims to investigate whether a schizophrenia patient leads to a lower first impression than a depressive individual and a healthy control when there is no diagnostic label, and on which features these first impressions are created. We extracted nonverbal behavioral measures from thin slice of social behaviour of the stimulus particip ants and presented audio and/or video clips to naive observers. We found that the general population had significantly more negative impressions and behavioral intentions to interact with the schizophrenia patient than the depressive and the control participant, regardless of the modality presented. As patients displayed a lower nonverbal behavioral, it suggests that social behavior drives first impression in schizophrenia. Such findings may lead to new ways of developing intervention program targeting motor nonverbal behavior, leading to reduce social rejection in these population.
The ability to quickly and accurately recognise emotional states is adaptive for numerous social functions. Although body movements are a potentially crucial cue for inferring emotions, few studies have studied the perception of body movements made in naturalistic emotional states. The current research focuses on the use of body movement information in the perception of fear expressed by targets in a virtual heights paradigm. Across three studies, participants made judgments about the emotional states of others based on motion-capture body movement recordings of those individuals actively engaged in walking a virtual plank at ground-level or 80 stories above a city street. Results indicated that participants were reliably able to differentiate between height and non-height conditions (Studies 1 & 2), were more likely to spontaneously describe target behaviour in the height condition as fearful (Study 2) and their fear estimates were highly calibrated with the fear ratings from the targets (Studies 1-3). Findings show that VR height scenarios can induce fearful behaviour and that people can perceive fear in minimal representations of body movement.
In our social lives, movement’s attractiveness greatly affects interpersonal cognition, and gait kinematics mediates walkers’ attractiveness. However, no model using gait kinematics has so far predicted gait attractiveness. Thus, this study constructed models of female gait attractiveness with gait kinematics and physique factors as explanatory variables for both barefoot and high-heel walking. First, using motion capture data from 17 women walking, including seven professional runway models, we created gait animations. We also calculated the following gait kinematics as candidate variables to explain walking’s attractiveness: four body-silhouette-related variables and six health-related variables. Then, 60 observers evaluated each gait animation’s attractiveness and femininity. We performed correlation analysis between these variables and evaluation scores to obtain explanatory variables. Structural equation modeling suggested two models for gait attractiveness, one composed of trunk and head silhouette factors and the other of physique, trunk silhouette, and health-related gait factors. The study’s results deepened our understanding of mechanisms behind nonverbal interpersonal cognition through physical movement and brought us closer to realization of artificial generation of attractive gait motions.
Static postures and body movements influence interactions. Mirroring promotes bonds, but rapport building depends more on other factors. The openness of postures may signal mental and emotional states. A controversial experiment even suggested that a “superhero” pose might improve confidence, charisma, and performance. Gestures and gait are other sources of information. Nevertheless, hand movements mainly accompany speaking, and humans are typically poor decoders of the walking style. Automatic tools, particularly those used for identification recognition, have a higher degree of accuracy. Individual chronicity influences nonverbal behavior, emotions, and performance, but several factors determine observers’ inferences. Job interviews highlight the inherent challenge of decoding people only from nonverbal clues. Interviewers can underrate some cues and overestimate other ones.
People express their own emotions and perceive others’ emotions via a variety of channels, including facial movements, body gestures, vocal prosody, and language. Studying these channels of affective behavior offers insight into both the experience and perception of emotion. Prior research has predominantly focused on studying individual channels of affective behavior in isolation using tightly controlled, non-naturalistic experiments. This approach limits our understanding of emotion in more naturalistic contexts where different channels of information tend to interact. Traditional methods struggle to address this limitation: manually annotating behavior is time-consuming, making it infeasible to do at large scale; manually selecting and manipulating stimuli based on hypotheses may neglect unanticipated features, potentially generating biased conclusions; and common linear modeling approaches cannot fully capture the complex, nonlinear, and interactive nature of real-life affective processes. In this methodology review, we describe how deep learning can be applied to address these challenges to advance a more naturalistic affective science. First, we describe current practices in affective research and explain why existing methods face challenges in revealing a more naturalistic understanding of emotion. Second, we introduce deep learning approaches and explain how they can be applied to tackle three main challenges: quantifying naturalistic behaviors, selecting and manipulating naturalistic stimuli, and modeling naturalistic affective processes. Finally, we describe the limitations of these deep learning methods, and how these limitations might be avoided or mitigated. By detailing the promise and the peril of deep learning, this review aims to pave the way for a more naturalistic affective science.
Body movements provide a rich source of emotional information during social interactions. Although the ability to perceive biological motion cues related to those movements begins to develop during infancy, processing those cues to identify emotions likely continues to develop into childhood. Previous studies used posed or exaggerated body movements, which might not reflect the kind of body expressions children experience. The current study used an event-related potential (ERP) priming paradigm to investigate the development of emotion recognition from more naturalistic body movements. Point-light displays (PLDs) of male adult bodies expressing happy or angry emotional movements while narrating a story were used as prime stimuli, whereas audio recordings of the words “happy” and “angry” spoken with an emotionally neutral prosody were used as targets. We recorded the ERPs time-locked to the onset of the auditory target from 3- and 6-year-old children, and we compared amplitude and latency of the N300 and N400 responses between the two age groups in the different prime–target conditions. There was an overall effect of prime for the N300 amplitude, with more negative-going responses for happy PLDs compared with angry PLDs. There was also an interaction between prime and target for the N300 latency, suggesting that all children were sensitive to the emotional congruency between body movements and words. For the N400 component, there was only an interaction among age, prime, and target for latency, suggesting an age-dependent modulation of this component when prime and target did not match in emotional information. Overall, our results suggest that the emergence of more complex emotion processing of body expressions occurs around 6 years of age, but it is not fully developed at this point in ontogeny.
We discuss the results of an experimental public good game with group representatives in Germany and Japan, societies with varying levels of individualism. Representatives are permitted to communicate with their constituencies, but not with other representatives. We focus on accountability between representative and his constituency and on the risk taken in the interaction between representatives. We find that in Germany, subjects more readily trust a stranger's cooperativeness, groups reach agreement faster and are quicker to discuss and formulate a strategy in pre-play communication vis-a-vis Japanese subjects, where group formation takes longer. Further, we find a stronger end effect in Germany than in Japan, where the period of play explains much less variance in contribution behavior.
Our study contributes to our understanding of intercultural differences in group formation and behavior when small group representatives invest in the public good, with implications for cross-cultural management, negotiation and leadership. Our evidence on between-country differences seems to empirically validate Yuki's (2003) framework for group behavior. We hope that our findings will stimulate further enquiry into human group behavior from a cross-cultural perspective.
Movement is a universal response to music, with dance often taking place in social settings. Although previous work has suggested that socially relevant information, such as personality and gender, are encoded in dance movement, the generalizability of previous work is limited. The current study aims to decode dancers’ gender, personality traits, and music preference from music-induced movements. We propose a method that predicts such individual difference from free dance movements, and demonstrate the robustness of the proposed method by using two data sets collected using different musical stimuli. In addition, we introduce a novel measure to explore the relative importance of different joints in predicting individual differences. Results demonstrated near perfect classification of gender, and notably high prediction of personality and music preferences. Furthermore, learned models demonstrated generalizability across datasets highlighting the importance of certain joints in intrinsic movement patterns specific to individual differences. Results further support theories of embodied music cognition and the role of bodily movement in musical experiences by demonstrating the influence of gender, personality, and music preferences on embodied responses to heard music.
Recognizing others' humanity is fundamental to how people think about and treat each other. People often ascribe greater humanness to groups that they socially value, but do they also systematically ascribe social value to different individuals? Here, we tested whether people (de)humanize individuals based on social traits inferred from their facial appearance, focusing on attractiveness and intelligence. Across five studies, less attractive and less intelligent-looking individuals seemed less human, but this varied by target gender: Attractiveness better predicted humanness attributions to women whereas perceived intelligence better predicted humanness attributions to men (Study 1). This difference seems to stem from gender stereotypes (preregistered Studies 2 and 3) and even extends to attributions of children's humanness (preregistered Study 4). Moreover, this gender difference leads to biases in moral treatment that confer more value to the lives of attractive women and intelligent-looking men (preregistered Study 5). These data help to explain how interpersonal judgments of individuals interact with intergroup biases to promote gender-based discrimination, providing greater nuance to the mechanisms and outcomes of dehumanization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
This paper proposes to harness the linguistic theory that looks at the construction of meaning in context – i.e., pragmatics – to investigate the contextual effects bearing on the interpretation of arguments in manipulative seduction contexts. Adopting a cognitively grounded relevance-theoretic approach, I will show that deceptive seduction is used primarily to strengthen the hearer’s perception of the seducer, thereby strengthening the standpoints and arguments s/he puts forward. In that sense, it will be argued, seductive moves function like contextual constraints on the interpretative processes. Exploring further the cognitive grounding of human interpretative processes, I will claim that many seductive manipulations rely on the halo effect – the cognitive bias whereby a positive trait (e.g., attractiveness) tends to spill over other personality traits (e.g., competence) – to create a contextual environment that will boost argument evaluation.
The current status and trends in personality research in the field of Japanese psychology between July 2016 and June 2017 were investigated. A total of 120 journal papers and 375 conference proceeding papers were extracted from personality-related research, and then classified and investigated from quantitative viewpoints. Japanese personality-related research accounted for 48.0% of all the papers published in eight major Japanese psychological journals during the target period; moreover, 47.2% of all presentations from two major psychological conferences (a total of 222,986 research participants) included 132 newly developed personality scales and items. Statistical causal analysis methods characterized by SEM were widely employed in these studies. Trends in research themes and implications of the status of personality-related research on personality psychology and the science of individual differences are also discussed.
Most previous research into the attractiveness of women’s bodies has relied on static stimuli such as line-drawings or photographs, particularly focusing on the role of body-mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR). However, real attractiveness judgments are invariably made on moving bodies, and movement may contain important information about attractiveness. We measured the importance of movement in attractiveness judgments by using motion-capture to isolate dynamic cues from 37 female walkers, and compare ratings of 75 participants made on these, static photographs, and the original videos. Multiple regression analysis revealed that both dynamic and static cues were important in the attractiveness of women’s bodies. Furthermore, BMI and WHR predicted attractiveness, but BMI was more important in dynamic rather than static cues, while WHR was important for both static and dynamic cues. These findings suggest that movement plays a crucial part in the attractiveness of female bodies and cannot be ignored in studies of human mate choice. Furthermore, dynamic and static cues may contain differential information related to female body shape, which further research should attempt to elucidate.
When people speak, they gesture. However, is the audience watching a speaker sensitive to this link? We translated the body movements of politicians into stick-figure animations and separated the visual from the audio channel. We then asked participants to match a selection of five audio tracks (including the correct one) with the stick-figure animations. The participants made correct decisions in 65% of all cases (chance level of 20%). Matching voices with animations was less difficult when politicians showed expansive movements and spoke with a loud voice. Thus, people are sensitive to the link between motion cues and vocal cues, and this link appears to become even more apparent when a speaker shows expressive behaviors. Future work will have to refine and validate the methods applied and investigate how mismatches between communication channels affect the impressions that people form of politicians.
Manipulative discourse can be described as a strategy that tries to derail the interpretative processes. Through the pragmatic theory of Context Selection Constraint, this article shows how a speaker/manipulator can bend the addressee's interpretation mechanisms. In particular, we see that some manipulative strategies rely on seduction in order to constrain effectively the interpretative processes of the addressee. The proposed analysis draws on the literature in cognitive psychology to argue that some well-known cognitive biases can be shown to be at work in seduction-based manipulation.
Humans spontaneously attribute a wide range of traits to strangers based solely on their facial features. These first impressions are known to exert striking effects on our choices and behaviours. In this paper, we provide a theoretical account of the origins of these spontaneous trait inferences. We describe a novel framework ('Trait Inference Mapping') in which trait inferences are products of mappings between locations in 'face space' and 'trait space'. These mappings are acquired during ontogeny and allow excitation of face representations to propagate automatically to associated trait representations. This conceptualization provides a framework within which the relative contribution of ontogenetic experience and genetic inheritance can be considered. Contrary to many existing ideas about the origins of trait inferences, we propose only a limited role for innate mechanisms and natural selection. Instead, our model explains inter-observer consistency by appealing to cultural learning and physiological responses that facilitate or 'canalise' particular face-trait mappings. Our TIM framework has both theoretical and substantive implications, and can be extended to trait inferences from non-facial cues to provide a unified account of first impressions.
Introduction The ability to perceive and act upon collision events has widespread practical value. People avoid collisions when they walk around obstacles, drive amid moving traffic, avoid being tackled in football, and avoid damage to blood vessels while performing surgery. People create collisions when they pick up objects, hit or catch baseballs, and control a plane’s contact with the runway to land smoothly. It is important to understand how collision events are perceived. Collision perception has been studied in various applied contexts such as driving (e.g., Caird and Hancock, 2002), sports (Gray, 2002; Gray and Sieffert, 2005), and aviation (Kruk and Regan, 1996). Studies of perceived collision focused on the perception of when a collision would occur or time-to-contact (TTC), and the perception of whether a collision would occur, or collision detection. This chapter collects results of both types of studies. It is concluded that collision perception is based on multiple information sources and that the information observers use depends on the context. It is essential to determine the conditions under which different information sources are used. Toward this aim, a conceptual framework is proposed. This chapter is organized into four sections. First, different types of collision events that people perceive are elucidated. The term “collision” includes contacting, intercepting, or reaching a target.
Human face and facial features based behavior has a major impact in human-human communications. Creating face based personality traits and its representations in a social robot is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose an approach for a robotic face presentation based on moveable 2D facial features and present a comparative study when a synthesized face is projected using three setups; 1) 3D mask, 2) 2D screen, and 3) our 2D moveable facial feature based visualization. We found that robot’s personality and character is highly influenced by the projected face quality as well as the motion of facial features.
Introduction Everyday experience makes it seem that hearing or auditory processing requires little if any effort under normal circumstances. In actuality, extensive research indicates that understanding information presented though the auditory channel (referred to as auditory cognition) can place significant demands on attentional resources, particularly in challenging listening environments or when multitasking is required (Baldwin, 2012). A focus of this chapter is key concepts in auditory perception that minimize the attentional demands of auditory cognition in order to maximize our ability to use this sensory channel effectively and safely in communications and auditory displays. We begin with some of the advantages and disadvantages of the auditory modality and then a brief discussion on when to use the auditory modality, followed by a section on auditory vigilance. We then discuss the psychoacoustics of auditory displays followed by a review of auditory warning recommendations and parameters. We conclude with examples of auditory displays and warnings in applied settings. Advantages and Disadvantages of the Auditory Modality The auditory modality has several unique characteristics that result in specific advantages and disadvantages when used to present information in displays. We begin by discussing some of the many advantages and then we point out some key disadvantages.
Objective:
It is not clear how well evaluations made by other people correspond with self-evaluations of esteem or confidence. To address this question, we compared measurements of confidence in participants with and without dandruff METHODS: Participants with dandruff were significantly different from healthy control participants on a quality of life measure of scalp dermatitis, but not on self-evaluations of esteem or confidence. To determine whether there were differences in the evaluation of confidence by others, both groups of participants were videoed while they prepared for or gave a presentation in an interview scenario RESULTS: Raters, who were unfamiliar with the identities of the participants, evaluated confidence from the muted videos. In contrast to their self-evaluations, male participants with dandruff were rated as having lower confidence compared to participants who reported a healthy scalp CONCLUSIONS: These findings reveal a difference between explicit and implicit measures of self-esteem in men compared to women with dandruff. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Visual search is the process of finding specific target items within an environment using particular visual features or prior knowledge. Searches can be as easy as finding your friend with purple hair in a lecture hall or as complicated as finding a purposefully concealed weapon among thousands of harmless bags at an airport checkpoint. Visual searches take place in everyday, innocuous contexts such as finding your car in a parking lot, and in critical contexts, such as finding enemy combatants in an urban battlefield. We conduct searches all the time, and most searches are relatively commonplace. However, in some cases, visual searches can be critically important. For example, airport security screeners must identify harmful items in baggage, and radiologists must identify abnormalities in medical radiographs. Despite the ubiquitous nature of search and the fact that it is sometimes life-or-death critical, human visual search is far from ideal - errors are often made, and searches are typically conducted for either too little or too much time. Thus, some fundamental research questions are the following: How can we maximize search efficiency? What is the best way to increase both search speed and accuracy? Much academic research has focused on increasing search performance, but does such research adequately translate to situations outside the laboratory environment? These open questions are the foundation of research in applied visual search - the application of what has been learned about search accuracy and efficiency from lab-based experimentation to search conditions in the workplace for career searchers, with the goal of increasing performance.
Building on recent research demonstrating consensus and accuracy in interpersonal perception based on minimal information, the present studies examined American and Chinese participants’ within- and cross-cultural judgments. In Study 1, the authors used the zero-acquaintance paradigm in the People's Republic of China and found consensus on all personality dimensions. In Study 2, Chinese and American participants judged each other on the basis of photographs, and consensus was found among Americans’ judgments of Chinese and Chinese participants’ judgments of Americans. Further, by correlating target effects based on within-culture zero-acquaintance judgments and cross-cultural photographic judgments, the authors found agreement in the judgments of individuals by members of their own culture and the other culture for both Chinese and Americans.
Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures.
Studies of human locomotion have found that male and female walkers differ in terms of lateral body sway, with males tending to swing their shoulders from side to side more than their hips, and females tending to swing their hips more than their shoulders. Experiments reported here demonstrate that naive viewers can identify the gender of the figure in a biological motion display very reliably when the display contains gender-specific lateral body sway. Sensitivity to gender is high even for displays containing only a fraction of a step cycle. This dynamic cue dominates structural cues based on torso shape (`centre-of-moment') when the cues are set in opposition. It is mediated by gender-specific differences in the velocity of shoulder and hip dots, not by positional differences in shoulder and hip dots during the step cycle.
Williams and Best's (1982, 1990a) cross-culturalgender stereotype data from 25 countries, previouslyanalyzed in terms of affective meanings, ego states, andpsychological needs, were re-analyzed in terms of the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality.In each country, participants were approximately 100university students, equally divided by gender. Withresults averaged across all countries, it was found that the pancultural male stereotype was higherthan the pancultural female stereotype on Extraversion,Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness toExperience while the pancultural female stereotype was higher on Agreeableness. Re-analysis of thestereotype data from Japan and Pakistan, which had beenfound relatively atypical in previous analyses, revealedFFM profiles generally similar to the pancultural profiles. The evaluative nature of each factoris discussed and related to the stereotypes associalization models.
Viewers can recognize themselves and others in an abstract display of their movements. Light sources mounted on joints prominent during the act of walking are sufficient cues for identification. No other information, no feedback, and little practice with such a display are needed. This procedure, developed by Johansson, holds promise for inquiry into the dimensions and features of event perception: It is both naturalistic and experimentally manageable
Examined whether physically attractive stimulus persons, both male and female, are (a) assumed to possess more socially desirable personality traits than physically unattractive stimulus persons, and (b) expected to lead better lives (e.g., be more competent husbands and wives and more successful occupationally) than unattractive stimulus persons. Sex of Subject * Sex of Stimulus Person interactions along these dimensions also were investigated. Results with 30 male and 30 female undergraduates indicate a "what is beautiful is good" stereotype along the physical attractiveness dimension with no Sex of Judge * Sex of Stimulus interaction. Implications of such a stereotype on self-concept development and the course of social interaction are discussed.
The accuracy of strangers' consensual judgments of personality based on "thin slices" of targets' nonverbal behavior were examined in relation to an ecologically valid criterion variable. In the 1st study, consensual judgments of college teachers' molar nonverbal behavior based on very brief (under 30 sec) silent video clips significantly predicted global end-of-semester student evaluations of teachers. In the 2nd study, similar judgments predicted a principal's ratings of high school teachers. In the 3rd study, ratings of even thinner slices (6 and 15 sec clips) were strongly related to the criterion variables. Ratings of specific micrononverbal behaviors and ratings of teachers' physical attractiveness were not as strongly related to the criterion variable. These findings have important implications for the areas of personality judgment, impression formation, and nonverbal behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Meta-analysis was used to examine findings in 2 related areas: experimental research on the physical attractiveness stereotype and correlational studies of characteristics associated with physical attractiveness. The experimental literature found that physically attractive people were perceived as more sociable, dominant, sexually warm, mentally healthy, intelligent, and socially skilled than physically unattractive people. Yet, the correlational literature indicated generally trivial relationships between physical attractiveness and measures of personality and mental ability, although good-looking people were less lonely, less socially anxious, more popular, more socially skilled, and more sexually experienced than unattractive people. Self-ratings of physical attractiveness were positively correlated with a wider range of attributes than was actual physical attractiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Consensus between self-ratings and stranger ratings of personality traits was investigated. A sample of 100 adults was videotaped while entering and walking through a room, sitting down, looking into the camera, and reading a standard text. The targets then provided self-descriptions on 5 personality factors. A sample of 24 strangers who had never seen the targets before was given 1 of 4 types of information on the targets: (1) sound-film, (2) silent film, (3) still, or (4) audiotape. Strangers rated various physical attributes and 20 traits of each target. Level of information influenced the validity but not the reliability of the stranger ratings, which were most valid for extraversion and conscientiousness. Extraversion covaried most strongly with physical attributes, and implicit theories on the covariation of traits with physical attributes were more accurate for extraversion and conscientiousness than for agreeableness, emotional stability, and culture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
One of our most fundamental cognitive adaptations is the ability to infer the intentions of others. Whole-body motion is a reliable, valid, easily perceived source of information about intentions because different kinds of intentional action have different motion signatures. In this study, we report four experiments that examined the ability of German adults, German children, and Shuar adults from Amazonian Ecuador to distinguish, on the basis of motion cues alone, between six categories of intentional interaction: chasing, fighting, courting, following, guarding, and playing. Naturalistic motion trajectories were elicited from untutored participants in a game-like situation with performance-based monetary payoffs and were categorized by other participants in a forced-choice design. On a six-category task, German adults correctly categorized intention 75% of the time (where 17% represents chance performance). On a four-category judgment task, children's performance was above chance by age 4, with a mean of 64% correct. A final study compared the judgments of German adults with those of Shuar hunter-horticulturalists. Performance was identical and well above chance in both populations, suggesting that cognitive adaptations for inferring intention from motion deserve further research as possible universal components of human psychology.
Theorists have argued that facial expressions of emotion serve the interpersonal function of allowing one animal to predict another's behavior. Humans may extend these predictions into the indefinite future, as in the case of trait inference. The hypothesis that facial expressions of emotion (e.g., anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness) affect subjects' interpersonal trait inferences (e.g., dominance and affiliation) was tested in two experiments. Subjects rated the dispositional affiliation and dominance of target faces with either static or apparently moving expressions. They inferred high dominance and affiliation from happy expressions, high dominance and low affiliation from angry and disgusted expressions, and low dominance from fearful and sad expressions. The findings suggest that facial expressions of emotion convey not only a target's internal state, but also differentially convey interpersonal information, which could potentially seed trait inference.
This study tested the hypothesis derived from ecological theory that adaptive social perceptions of emotion expressions fuel trait impressions. Moreover, it was predicted that these impressions would be overgeneralized and perceived in faces that were not intentionally posing expressions but nevertheless varied in emotional demeanor. To test these predictions, perceivers viewed 32 untrained targets posing happy, surprised, angry, sad, and fearful expressions and formed impressions of their dominance and affiliation. When targets posed happiness and surprise they were perceived as high in dominance and affiliation whereas when they posed anger they were perceived as high in dominance and low in affiliation. When targets posed sadness and fear they were perceived as low in dominance. As predicted, many of these impressions were overgeneralized and attributed to targets who were not posing expressions. The observed effects were generally independent of the impact of other facial cues (i.e., attractiveness and babyishness).
The purpose of this study was to develop methods for assessing bodily expression and to provide a preliminary description
of movement characteristics associated with positive and negative emotions during a single movement task—knocking. We used
an autobiographical memories paradigm for elicitation, observer rating of emotion intensities for recognition, and Effort-Shape
and kinematic analyses for movement description. Actors felt the target emotions in nearly all the trials but observers recognized
them in relatively few movement trials, especially for the positive emotions. Differences in movement characteristics were
identified for the target emotions with both the qualitative and quantitative movement analyses.
KeywordsBodily expression-Emotion recognition-Kinematics-Laban-Effort-Shape
The sex of human walkers can be recognized without familiarity cues from displays of pointlight sources mounted on major joints.
Static versions of these abstract displays do not permit accurate recognition of sex. Variation in the degree of armswing
or in walking speed generally interferes with recognition, except that faster speeds are associated somewhat with improved
recognition of females. Lights on upper-body joints permit more accurate guesses than do Lights on lower-body joints, but
identification is possible even from minimal displays, with lights placed only on the ankles. No feedback was given to observers.
Confidence judgments of sex relate to the accuracy of responses in a manner that suggests that viewers know what they are
doing.
Body motion signals socially relevant traits like the sex, age, and even the genetic quality of actors and may therefore facilitate various social judgements. By examining ratings and voting decisions based solely on body motion of political candidates, we considered how the candidates' motion affected people's judgements and voting behaviour. In two experiments, participants viewed stick figure motion displays made from videos of politicians in public debate. Participants rated the motion displays for a variety of social traits and then indicated their vote preference. In both experiments, perceived physical health was the single best predictor of vote choice, and no two-factor model produced significant improvement. Notably, although attractiveness and leadership correlated with voting behaviour, neither provided additional explanatory power to a single-factor model of health alone. Our results demonstrate for the first time that motion can produce systematic vote preferences.
Human groups are unusual among primates in that our leaders are often 5 democratically selected. Many social judgements are made using only facial 6 information and here we examined the potential influence of facial perceptions 7 on leadership elections. We address this possibility using a case study of the 8 2004 US presidential candidates George Bush and John Kerry. We removed 9 recognition effects by applying the difference between their faces to a neutral, 10 unfamiliar face, and then measured how the difference in their facial 11 physiognomies influenced attributions and hypothetical voting decisions. The 12 ‘plus-Bush’ and ‘plus-Kerry’ faces were seen to possess different but 13 potentially valued leadership traits. For voting, preference for face version was 14 context-dependent. Raters preferred the plus-Bush face as a war-time leader 15 and the plus-Kerry face as a peace-time leader. We also examined voting to 16 computer graphic manipulations of masculinity showing that masculine faces 17 were voted for more in war-time and feminine faces in peace-time contexts, 18 suggesting that attitudes to sexual dimorphism in faces play an important role 19 in voting decisions. Both findings demonstrate that voter’s attitudes to the 20 physical appearance of politicians may interact with their perceptions of the 21 current political climate to determine voting behaviour. Such flexible 22 leadership choice may reflect the selection of leaders who are most beneficial 23 to the individuals of a group at a particular time or in a particular situation.
Human observers readily recognize emotions expressed in body movement. Their perceptual judgments are based on simple movement features, such as overall speed, but also on more intricate posture and dynamic cues. The systematic analysis of such features is complicated due to the difficulty of considering the large number of potentially relevant kinematic and dynamic parameters. To identify emotion-specific features we motion-captured the neutral and emotionally expressive (anger, happiness, sadness, fear) gaits of 25 individuals. Body posture was characterized by average flexion angles, and a low-dimensional parameterization of the spatio-temporal structure of joint trajectories was obtained by approximation with a nonlinear mixture model. Applying sparse regression, we extracted critical emotion-specific posture and movement features, which typically depended only on a small number of joints. The features we extracted from the motor behavior closely resembled features that were critical for the perception of emotion from gait, determined by a statistical analysis of classification and rating judgments of 21 observers presented with avatars animated with the recorded movements. The perceptual relevance of these features was further supported by another experiment showing that artificial walkers containing only the critical features induced high-level after-effects matching those induced by adaptation with natural emotional walkers.
Observers can recognize other people from their movements. What is interesting is that observers are best able to recognize their own movements. Enhanced visual sensitivity to self-generated movement may reflect the contribution of motor planning processes to the visual analysis of human action. An alternative view is that enhanced visual sensitivity to self-motion results from extensive experience seeing one's own limbs move. To investigate this alternative explanation, participants viewed point-light actors from first-person egocentric and third-person allocentric viewpoints. Although observers routinely see their own actions from the first-person view, participants were unable to identify egocentric views of their own actions. Conversely, with little real-world experience seeing themselves from third-person views, participants readily identified their own actions from allocentric views. When viewing allocentric displays, participants accurately identified both front and rear views of their own actions. Because people have little experience observing themselves from behind or from third-person views, these findings suggest that visual learning cannot account for enhanced visual sensitivity to self-generated action.
People automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions, and these evaluations predict important social outcomes, ranging from electoral success to sentencing decisions. Based on behavioral studies and computer modeling, we develop a 2D model of face evaluation. First, using a principal components analysis of trait judgments of emotionally neutral faces, we identify two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, that are sufficient to describe face evaluation and show that these dimensions can be approximated by judgments of trustworthiness and dominance. Second, using a data-driven statistical model for face representation, we build and validate models for representing face trustworthiness and face dominance. Third, using these models, we show that, whereas valence evaluation is more sensitive to features resembling expressions signaling whether the person should be avoided or approached, dominance evaluation is more sensitive to features signaling physical strength/weakness. Fourth, we show that important social judgments, such as threat, can be reproduced as a function of the two orthogonal dimensions of valence and dominance. The findings suggest that face evaluation involves an overgeneralization of adaptive mechanisms for inferring harmful intentions and the ability to cause harm and can account for rapid, yet not necessarily accurate, judgments from faces.
That observers tend to agree in their ratings of a target even if they have never interacted with that target has been called consensus at zero acquaintance. The basic finding that consensus is highest for judgments concerning a target's degree of extraversion (EV) and somewhat weaker for judgments of conscientiousness is replicated. Several potential observable cues that might be used by judges when rating targets are examined. The finding that ratings of physical attractiveness correlate with judgments of EV is replicated. In Study 1, rapid body movements and smiling were also found to correlate with EV judgments. The level of consensus declined when initially unacquainted Ss interacted one-on-one (Study 2), but did not decline--and even increased--when Ss interacted in a group (Study 3). Ss judged as extraverted at zero acquaintance were also seen as extraverted after interacting with others.
This research focused on the target effect on a perceiver's judgments of personality when the perceiver and the target are unacquainted. The perceiver was given no opportunity to interact with the target, a condition we refer to as zero acquaintance. We reasoned that in order to make personality judgments, perceivers would use the information available to them (physical appearance). Consensus in personality judgments would result, then, from shared stereotypes about particular physical appearance characteristics. Results from three separate studies with 259 subjects supported this hypothesis. On two of the five dimensions (extraversion and conscientiousness) on which subjects rated each other, a significant proportion of variance was due to the stimulus target. Consensus on judgments of extraversion appears to have been largely mediated by judgments of physical attractiveness. Across the three studies there was also evidence that the consensus in judgments on these two dimensions had some validity, in that they correlated with self-judgments on those two dimensions.
Drawing on the ecological theory of social perception, we investigated the impact of age-related gait qualities on trait impressions. In Study 1, subjects observed 5- to 70-year-old walkers depicted in point-light displays, and rated the walkers' traits, gaits, and ages. Younger walkers were perceived as more powerful and happier than older walkers. A composite of youthful gait qualities predicted trait impressions regardless of the walkers' masculine gait qualities, sex, and perceived age. In Study 2, subjects observed young adult walkers depicted in point-light displays and rated their traits, gaits, and ages. Consistent with the effects of real age found in Study 1, young adults with youthful gaits were perceived as more powerful and happier than peers with older gaits, irrespective of their masculine gait qualities, sex, and perceived age. Study 3 replicated Study 2 using displays showing walkers' full bodies and faces. A youthful gait predicted trait impressions even when subjects could discern the walkers' age and sex.
Consensus refers to the extent to which judges agree in their ratings of a common target. Consensus has been an important area of research in social and personality psychology. In this article, generalizability theory is used to develop a percentage of total variance measure of consensus. This measure is used to review the level of consensus across 32 studies by considering the role of acquaintance level and trait dimension. The review indicates that consensus correlations ranged from zero to about .3, with higher levels of consensus for ratings of Extraversion. The studies do not provide evidence that consensus increases with increasing acquaintance, a counterintuitive result that can be accounted for by a theoretical model (D.A. Kenny, 1991, in press). Problems in the interpretation of longitudinal research are reviewed.
Building on recent research demonstrating consensus and accuracy in interpersonal perception based on minimal information, the present studies examined American and Chinese participants' within- and cross-cultural judgments. In Study 1, the authors used the zero-acquaintance paradigm in the People's Republic of China and found consensus on all personality dimensions. In Study 2, Chinese and American participants judged each other on the basis of photographs, and consensus was found among Americans' judgments of Chinese and Chinese participants' judgments of Americans. Further, by correlating target effects based on within-culture zero-acquaintance judgments and cross-cultural photographic judgments, the authors found agreement in the judgments of individuals by members of their own culture and the other culture for both Chinese and Americans.
Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures.
In the perception of biological motion, the stimulus information is confined to a small number of lights attached to the major joints of a moving person. Despite this drastic degradation of the stimulus information, the human visual apparatus organizes the swarm of moving dots into a vivid percept of a moving biological creature. Several techniques have been proposed to create point-light stimuli: placing dots at strategic locations on photographs or films, video recording a person with markers attached to the body, computer animation based on artificial synthesis, and computer animation based on motion-capture data. A description is given of the technique we are currently using in our laboratory to produce animated point-light figures. The technique is based on a combination of motion capture and three-dimensional animation software (Character Studio, Autodesk, Inc., 1998). Some of the advantages of our approach are that the same actions can be shown from any viewpoint, that point-light versions, as well as versions with a full-fleshed character, can be created of the same actions, and that point lights can indicate the center of a joint (thereby eliminating several disadvantages associated with other techniques).
Biological motion contains information about the identity of an agent as well as about his or her actions, intentions, and emotions. The human visual system is highly sensitive to biological motion and capable of extracting socially relevant information from it. Here we investigate the question of how such information is encoded in biological motion patterns and how such information can be retrieved. A framework is developed that transforms biological motion into a representation allowing for analysis using linear methods from statistics and pattern recognition. Using gender classification as an example, simple classifiers are constructed and compared to psychophysical data from human observers. The analysis reveals that the dynamic part of the motion contains more information about gender than motion-mediated structural cues. The proposed framework can be used not only for analysis of biological motion but also to synthesize new motion patterns. A simple motion modeler is presented that can be used to visualize and exaggerate the differences in male and female walking patterns.
Self-reports, peer reports, intelligence tests, and ratings of personality and intelligence from 15 videotaped episodes were collected for 600 participants. The average cross-situational consistency of trait impressions across the 15 episodes was .43. Shared stereotypes related to gender and age were mostly accurate and contributed little to agreement among judges. Agreement was limited mainly by nonshared meaning systems and by nonoverlapping information. Personality inferences from thin slices of behavior were significantly associated with reports by knowledgeable informants. This association became stronger when more episodes were included, but gains in prediction were low beyond 6 episodes. Inferences of intelligence from thin slices of behavior strongly predicted intelligence test scores. A particularly strong single predictor was how persons read short sentences.
Whilst the relationship between aspects of facial shape and attractiveness has been extensively studied, few studies have investigated which characteristics of the surface of faces positively influence attractiveness judgments. As many researchers have proposed a link between attractiveness and traits that appear healthy, apparent health of facial skin might be a property of the surface of faces that positively influences attractiveness judgments. In experiment 1 we tested for a positive correlation between ratings of the apparent health of small skin patches (extracted from the left and right cheeks of digital face images) and ratings of the attractiveness of male faces. By using computer-graphics faces, in experiment 2 we aimed to establish if apparent health of skin influences male facial attractiveness independently of shape information. Results suggest that apparent health of facial skin is correlated both with ratings of male facial attractiveness (experiment 1) and with being a visual cue for judgments of the attractiveness of male faces (experiment 2). These findings underline the importance of controlling for the influence of visible skin condition in studies of facial attractiveness and are consistent with the proposal that attractive physical traits are those that positively influence others' perceptions of an individual's health.
Humans are able to use nonverbal behavior to make fast, reliable judgments of both emotional states and personality traits. Whereas a sizeable body of research has identified neural structures critical for emotion recognition, the neural substrates of personality trait attribution have not been explored in detail. In the present study, we investigated the neural systems involved in emotion and personality trait judgments. We used a type of visual stimulus that is known to convey both emotion and personality information, namely, point-light walkers. We compared the emotion and personality trait judgments made by subjects with brain damage to those made by neurologically normal subjects and then conducted a lesion overlap analysis to identify neural regions critical for these two tasks. Impairments on the two tasks dissociated: Some subjects were impaired at emotion recognition, but judged personality normally; other subjects were impaired on the personality task, but normal at emotion recognition. Moreover, these dissociations in performance were associated with damage to specific neural regions: Right somatosensory cortices were a primary focus of lesion overlap in subjects impaired on the emotion task, whereas left frontal opercular cortices were a primary focus of lesion overlap in subjects impaired on the personality task. These findings suggest that attributions of emotional states and personality traits are accomplished by partially dissociable neural systems.
Human observers demonstrate impressive visual sensitivity to human movement. What defines this sensitivity? If motor experience influences the visual analysis of action, then observers should be most sensitive to their own movements. If view-dependent visual experience determines visual sensitivity to human movement, then observers should be most sensitive to the movements of their friends. To test these predictions, participants viewed sagittal displays of point-light depictions of themselves, their friends, and strangers performing various actions. In actor identification and discrimination tasks, sensitivity to one's own motion was highest. Visual sensitivity to friends', but not strangers', actions was above chance. Performance was action dependent. Control studies yielded chance performance with inverted and static displays, suggesting that form and low-motion cues did not define performance. These results suggest that both motor and visual experience define visual sensitivity to human action.
We show that inferences of competence based solely on facial appearance predicted the outcomes of U.S. congressional elections
better than chance (e.g., 68.8% of the Senate races in 2004) and also were linearly related to the margin of victory. These
inferences were specific to competence and occurred within a 1-second exposure to the faces of the candidates. The findings
suggest that rapid, unreflective trait inferences can contribute to voting choices, which are widely assumed to be based primarily
on rational and deliberative considerations.
Two studies examined the validity of impressions based on static facial appearance. In Study 1, the content of previously unacquainted classmates' impressions of one another was assessed during the 1st, 5th, and 9th weeks of the semester. These impressions were compared with ratings of facial photographs of the participants that were provided by a separate group of unacquainted judges. Impressions based on facial appearance alone predicted impressions provided by classmates after up to 9 weeks of acquaintance. Study 2 revealed correspondences between self ratings provided by stimulus persons, and ratings of their faces provided by unacquainted judges. Mechanisms by which these links may develop are discussed.
Now fully revealed by the fire and candlelight, I was amazed more than ever to behold the transformation of Heathcliff. His countenance was much older in expression and decision of feature than Mr. Linton's; it looked intelligent and retained no marks of former degradation. A half civilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued.
The “good genes” explanation of attractiveness posits that mate preferences favour healthy individuals due to direct and indirect benefits associated with the selection of a healthy mate. Consequently, attractiveness judgements are likely to reflect judgements of apparent health. One physical characteristic that may inform health judgements is fluctuating asymmetry as it may act as a visual marker for genetic quality and developmental stability. Consistent with these suggestions, a number of studies have found relationships between facial symmetry and facial attractiveness. In Study 1, the interplay between facial symmetry, attractiveness, and judgements of apparent health was explored within a partial correlation design. Findings suggest that the attractiveness–symmetry relationship is mediated by a link between judgements of apparent health and facial symmetry. In Study 2, an opposite-sex bias in sensitivity to facial symmetry was observed when judging health. Thus, perceptual analysis of symmetry may be an adaptation facilitating discrimination between potential mates on the basis of apparent health. The findings of both studies are consistent with a “good genes” explanation of the attractiveness–symmetry relationship and problematic for the claim that symmetry is attractive as a by-product of the ease with which the visual recognition system processes symmetric stimuli.
Dance is one type of movement that expresses emotion, however perceptions of dance movements and the corresponding trait inferences of the dancer have received no attention in the literature. This study examined how people determine dancer trait and emotion characteristics from point-light displays of dance, and whether dance experience affects differential attunements to dance movements. Dancers performed one "sad" and one "happy" dance while being filmed in point light, which is a technique used to isolate movement cues from other person information (such as race, sex, height). Experienced dancers and dance novices served as participants and judged the dances on two types of measures - movement (e.g., constricted-open) and dancer trait characteristics (e.g., happy-sad). The results revealed that all participants easily judged happy dances as happier, stronger, and more approachable, dominant, and extroverted than sad dances. However, movement judgments of happy dances were affected by experience, as experienced dancers perceived movements in the happy dances to be less free, fluid, and relaxed, but more exaggerated, than did novices. These results support ecological theory (McArthur & Baron, 1983) in that all were easily able to determine dancer traits and emotion from dances, but fine discriminations among the dance movements during fast, happy dances were typically made only by those who had dance training and were attuned to minute motion differences.
In addition to signaling identity, sex, age, and emotional state, people frequently use facial characteristics as a basis for personality attributions. Typically, there is a high degree of consensus in the attributions made to faces. Nevertheless, the extent to which such judgments are veridical is unclear and somewhat controversial. We have examined the relationship between self-report and perceived personality using both faces of individuals and computer graphic composites. Photographs were taken of 146 men and 148 women who each also completed a self-report personality questionnaire from which scores on the big five personality dimensions were derived. In study 1, we identified a relationship between self-reported extraversion and perceived extraversion in individual faces. For male faces alone, we also found some accuracy in the perception of emotional stability and openness to experience. In study 2, composite faces were made from individuals self-reporting high and low scores on each of the five dimensions. These composites were rated for personality and attractiveness by independent raters. Discriminant analyses indicated that, controlling for attractiveness, independent ratings on congruent personality dimensions were best able to discriminate between composite faces generated from individuals high or low on the self-report dimensions of agreeableness, extraversion, and, for male faces only, emotional stability.
Three experiments investigated whether women can change their walking style and hence reduce their vulnerability to physical attack. In Experiment 1, women were videotaped walking normally and when imagining themselves in a situation of low personal safety. Women were rated as harder to attack in the low safety condition. Differences in walking style accounted for differences in ease-of-attack ratings. Experiment 2 compared walking styles and vulnerability of women before and after completing a self-defense course. No differences were seen across sessions. Experiment 3 investigated walking styles and vulnerability of women before and after completing individualized walking training programs. Differences in vulnerability between sessions were revealed and could be accounted for by changes in walking-style features.