First impressions: Gait cues drive reliable trait judgements

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.

[1]  Karl Verfaillie,et al.  Creating stimuli for the study of biological-motion perception , 2002, Behavior research methods, instruments, & computers : a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.

[2]  Susan C. Roberts,et al.  Facial appearance affects voting decisions. , 2007 .

[3]  M. Bar,et al.  Very first impressions. , 2006, Emotion.

[4]  D. Scully.  Visual Perception of Biological Motion , 1987 .

[5]  J. Cutting,et al.  Recognizing the sex of a walker from a dynamic point-light display , 1977 .

[6]  J. Montepare,et al.  Impressions of people created by age-related qualities of their gaits. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[7]  N. Troje.  Decomposing biological motion: a framework for analysis and synthesis of human gait patterns. , 2002, Journal of vision.

[8]  Robert C. Satterwhite,et al.  Pancultural Gender Stereotypes Revisited: The Five Factor Model , 1999 .

[9]  D. Perrett,et al.  Facial symmetry and judgements of apparent health: Support for a “good genes” explanation of the attractiveness–symmetry relationship , 2001 .

[10]  A. Todorov,et al.  The functional basis of face evaluation , 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[11]  Maggie Shiffrar,et al.  Viewpoint and the recognition of people from their movements. , 2009, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[12]  P. Todd,et al.  Accurate judgments of intention from motion cues alone: A cross-cultural study , 2005 .

[13]  S. Asch.  Forming impressions of personality. , 1946, Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

[14]  A. Sanfey,et al.  Friend or foe: The effect of implicit trustworthiness judgments in social decision-making , 2008, Cognition.

[15]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Consensus in interpersonal perception: acquaintance and the big five. , 1994, Psychological bulletin.

[16]  D. Perrett,et al.  Personality judgments from natural and composite facial images: More evidence for a "kernel of truth" in social perception , 2006 .

[17]  I. Arend,et al.  Perceived health from biological motion predicts voting behaviour , 2010, Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[18]  B. Knutson.  Facial expressions of emotion influence interpersonal trait inferences , 1996 .

[19]  M. Trimble,et al.  The Human Amygdala , 2010 .

[20]  Joann M. Montepare,et al.  The Contribution of Emotion Perceptions and Their Overgeneralizations to Trait Impressions , 2003 .

[21]  Janine Willis,et al.  First Impressions , 2006, Psychological science.

[22]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Consensus in interpersonal perception: acquaintance and the big five. , 1994, Psychological bulletin.

[23]  M. Shiffrar,et al.  Recognizing people from their movement. , 2005, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[24]  Armin Bruderlin,et al.  Perceiving affect from arm movement , 2001, Cognition.

[25]  D. Berry.  Taking People at Face Value: Evidence for the Kernel of Truth Hypothesis , 1990 .

[26]  Lucy Johnston,et al.  Victim Selection and Kinematics: A Point-Light Investigation of Vulnerability to Attack , 2002 .

[27]  Andrew D. Engell,et al.  Implicit Trustworthiness Decisions: Automatic Coding of Face Properties in the Human Amygdala , 2007, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[28]  D. Perrett,et al.  Is everybody always my friend? Perception of approachability in Williams syndrome , 2006, Neuropsychologia.

[29]  David C. Evans,et al.  The effect of facial symmetry on perceptions of personality and attractiveness , 2003 .

[30]  Barbara Anne Dosher,et al.  Task precision at transfer determines specificity of perceptual learning. , 2009, Journal of vision.

[31]  J. Cutting,et al.  Recognizing friends by their walk: Gait perception without familiarity cues , 1977 .

[32]  S. Brownlow,et al.  Perception of movement and dancer characteristics from point-light displays of dance , 1997 .

[33]  Elizabeth A. Crane,et al.  Methodology for Assessing Bodily Expression of Emotion , 2010 .

[34]  G. Johansson.  Visual perception of biological motion and a model for its analysis , 1973 .

[35]  E. Pennisi.  Kernel of Truth , 2008, Science.

[36]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Consensus at zero acquaintance: replication, behavioral cues, and stability. , 1992, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[37]  E. Phelps,et al.  The human amygdala. , 2009 .

[38]  R. Adolphs,et al.  Cortical Regions for Judgments of Emotions and Personality Traits from Point-light Walkers , 2004, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[39]  Claire L. Roether,et al.  Critical features for the perception of emotion from gait. , 2009, Journal of vision.

[40]  P. Borkenau,et al.  Trait inferences: Sources of validity at zero acquaintance. , 1992 .

[41]  E. Berscheid,et al.  What is beautiful is good. , 1972, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[42]  G. Mather,et al.  Gender discrimination in biological motion displays based on dynamic cues , 1994, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences.

[43]  A. Young,et al.  Emotion Perception from Dynamic and Static Body Expressions in Point-Light and Full-Light Displays , 2004, Perception.

[44]  N. Ambady,et al.  Half a minute: Predicting teacher evaluations from thin slices of nonverbal behavior and physical attractiveness. , 1993 .

[45]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Cross-cultural consensus in personality judgments. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[46]  P. Costa,et al.  Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: robust and surprising findings. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[47]  D. A. Kenny,et al.  Consensus in personality judgments at zero acquaintance. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[48]  A. Todorov,et al.  Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes , 2005, Science.

[49]  Age , 2000, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[50]  D. Perrett,et al.  When Facial Attractiveness is Only Skin Deep , 2004, Perception.

[51]  P. Borkenau,et al.  Thin slices of behavior as cues of personality and intelligence. , 2004, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[52]  S. Lea,et al.  Perception of Emotion from Dynamic Point-Light Displays Represented in Dance , 1996, Perception.

[53]  M. Garner,et al.  Changing Kinematics as a Means of Reducing Vulnerability to Physical Attack1 , 2004 .

[54]  A. Feingold.  Good-looking people are not what we think. , 1992 .

[55]  R. Adolphs,et al.  The human amygdala in social judgment , 1998, Nature.