Appearance, including facial expression, posture, and clothing provide important visual communications to observers.
To evaluate observers’ accuracy in judging personality traits based on the appearance of people they didn’t know, Sonoma State University’s Laura Naumann, with Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis, University of Cambridge’s Peter Rentfrow, and Samuel Gosling of University of Texas at Austin asked volunteers to rate 10 personality traits.
These characteristics included Big Five Personality Traits – Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, proposed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae of the U.S. National Institutes of Health .
In addition, participants assessed likability, self-esteem, loneliness, religiosity, and political orientation) of people pictured full-body photographs.
These measures were compared with ratings by the photographed person and people acquainted with the individual.
Observers’ judgments were accurate when they rated extraversion, self-esteem, and religiosity among people photographed in a “standardized” pose, and were correct for more personality traits when judging photographs in spontaneous poses and facial expressions.
This suggests that candid photographs provide more accurate cues to some personality characteristics than planned poses.
Static cues such as clothing style, and dynamic cues including facial expression and posture provided “cue validity” that enabled observers to make accurate judgments of personality characteristics by “cue utilization.”
These findings confirmed that observers make accurate inferences about some personality characterics based on visual cues, validating novelist John Irving’s assertion through his narrator, John Wheelwright, in A Prayer for Owen Meany: “Things often are as they appear. First impressions matter.”
-*How accurate are your judgments of personality traits in people you don’t already know?
-*How accurate are other people’s inferences about your personality traits?
RELATED POSTS:
- Symbolic Practice Improves Memorization, Performance
- “Everything is Negotiable”: Prepare, Ask, Revise, Ask Again
- “Self-Packaging” as Personal Brand: Implicit Requirements for Personal Appearance?
- Executive Presence: “Gravitas”, Communication…and Appearance?
- How Much Does Appearance Matter?
- Self Compassion, not Self-Esteem, Enhances Performance
- Inferring, Predicting Others’ Thoughts, Intentions, Behavior
Twitter @kathrynwelds
Google+
Facebook
©Kathryn Welds
Pingback: Introversion and Extraversion Starts with Your Genes and Shows in Your Brain | Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Pingback: The Attractiveness Bias: “Cheerleader Effect”, Positive Attributions, and “Distinctive Accuracy” | Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Pingback: Reading Literary Fiction Increases “Theory of Mind” Empathic Insight | Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Pingback: Detecting Trustworthiness, Opening Your Mind? | Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Pingback: Music Preferences Indicate Personality Traits | Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Pingback: Attractive Appearance Helps Men Gain Business Funding – But Not Women? | Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Pingback: Gender Transitions Demonstrate Continuing Gender Differences in Pay, Workplace Experience | Kathryn Welds | Curated Research and Commentary
Pingback: Self-Perceived Attractiveness Shapes Views of Social Hierarchies | Occupy Wall Street by Platlee