In everyday life, our perceptions of others’ traits are influenced by a combination of their actions and our relationship with them. We enrolled 142 participants in a virtual escape room to examine (a) whether an unfamiliar task changed perceptions of friends’ traits, (b) which types of prior relationships influenced trait perceptions, and (c) the relative importance of perceptions of actions in assessing traits. Higher pregame similarity ratings led to increases in perceptions of competence, while higher pregame liking ratings led to increases in perceptions of sociability. In addition, objective performance mattered for competence ratings, whereas subjective perceptions of performance mattered for sociability ratings. Our findings demonstrate the importance of real-world relationships not only for how we change our beliefs about others’ traits but also for perceptions of the very actions we use as evidence for those beliefs.
AbeleA. E.EllemersN.FiskeS. T.KochA.YzerbytV. (2021). Navigating the social world: Toward an integrated framework for evaluating self, individuals, and groups. Psychological Review, 128(2), 290–314. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000262
AkkermanS.Van den BosscheP.AdmiraalW.GijselaersW.SegersM.SimonsR.-J.KirschnerP. (2007). Reconsidering group cognition: From conceptual confusion to a boundary area between cognitive and socio-cultural perspectives?Educational Research Review, 2(1), 39–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2007.02.001
4.
AlickeM. D.SedikidesC. (2009). Self-enhancement and self-protection: What they are and what they do. European Review of Social Psychology, 20(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463280802613866
5.
AlvesH.KochA.UnkelbachC. (2016). My friends are all alike: The relation between liking and perceived similarity in person perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 103–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.10.011
6.
AmesD. R. (2004). Strategies for social inference: A similarity contingency model of projection and stereotyping in attribute prevalence estimates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(5), 573–585. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.5.573
7.
AndersonC.BrionS.MooreD. A.KennedyJ. A. (2012). A status-enhancement account of overconfidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(4), 718–735. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029395
8.
BackM. D.KennyD. A. (2010). The social relations model: How to understand dyadic processes. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(10), 855–870. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00303.x
9.
BeerJ.HughesB. (2010). Self-enhancement: A social neuroscience perspective. In AlickeM. D.SedikidesC. (Eds.), Handbook of self-enhancement and self-protection (pp. 49–65). Guilford Press.
10.
BerscheidE.SnyderM.OmotoA. M. (1989). The Relationship Closeness Inventory: Assessing the closeness of interpersonal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(5), 792–807. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.57.5.792
11.
BiesanzJ. C.WestS. G.MillevoiA. (2007). What do you learn about someone over time? The relationship between length of acquaintance and consensus and self-other agreement in judgments of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(1), 119–135. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.1.119
12.
BrambillaM.CarraroL.CastelliL.SacchiS. (2019). Changing impressions: Moral character dominates impression updating. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 82, 64–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.01.003
13.
BrambillaM.LeachC. W. (2014). On the importance of being moral: The distinctive role of morality in social judgment. Social Cognition, 32(4), 397–408. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2014.32.4.397
14.
BrambillaM.RusconiP.SacchiS.CherubiniP. (2011). Looking for honesty: The primary role of morality (vs. sociability and competence) in information gathering. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41(2), 135–143. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.744
15.
BrambillaM.SacchiS.RusconiP.GoodwinG. P. (2021). The primacy of morality in impression development: Theory, research, and future directions. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 64, 187–262. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2021.03.001
16.
BrannonS. M.GawronskiB. (2017). A second chance for first impressions? Exploring the context-(in)dependent updating of implicit evaluations. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(3), 275–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616673875
17.
Cannon-BowersJ. A.BowersC. (2011). Team development and functioning. In ZedeckS. (Ed.), APA handbook of industrial and organizational psychology: Building and developing the organization (Vol. 1, pp. 597-650). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/12169-019
18.
CaoJ.BanajiM. R. (2016). The base rate principle and the fairness principle in social judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(27), 7475–7480. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1524268113
19.
CastelliL.CarraroL.GhittiC.PastoreM. (2009). The effects of perceived competence and sociability on electoral outcomes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(5), 1152–1155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.06.018
ConeJ.FergusonM. J. (2015). He did what? The role of diagnosticity in revising implicit evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(1), 37–57. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000014
22.
DennyB. T.InhoffM. C.ZerubavelN.DavachiL.OchsnerK. N. (2015). Getting over it: Long-lasting effects of emotion regulation on amygdala response. Psychological Science, 26(9), 1377–1388. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615578863
23.
DoréB. P.MorrisR. R.BurrD. A.PicardR. W.OchsnerK. N. (2017). Helping others regulate emotion predicts increased regulation of one’s own emotions and decreased symptoms of depression. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(5), 729–739. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217695558
24.
DriskellJ. E.SalasE.JohnstonJ. (1999). Does stress lead to a loss of team perspective?Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 3(4), 291–302.
25.
DriskellT.BlickensderferE. L.SalasE. (2013). Is three a crowd? Examining rapport in investigative interviews. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 17(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029686
FergusonM. J.MannT. C.ConeJ.ShenX. (2019). When and how implicit first impressions can be updated. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(4), 331–336. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419835206
28.
FinkelE. J.SimpsonJ. A.EastwickP. W. (2017). The psychology of close relationships: Fourteen core principles. Annual Review of Psychology, 68(1), 383–411. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044038
FiskeS. T.CuddyA. J. C.GlickP. (2007). Universal dimensions of social cognition: Warmth and competence. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11(2), 77–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.005
ForgasJ. P.BowerG. H. (1987). Mood effects on person-perception judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 53–60. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.53
GeukesK.NestlerS.HuttemanR.KüfnerA. C. P.BackM. D. (2017). Trait personality and state variability: Predicting individual differences in within- and cross-context fluctuations in affect, self-evaluations, and behavior in everyday life. Journal of Research in Personality, 69, 124–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.06.003
35.
GilbertD. T.PelhamB. W.KrullD. S. (1988). On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(5), 733–740. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.5.733
36.
GonzalesA. L.HancockJ. T.PennebakerJ. W. (2010). Language style matching as a predictor of social dynamics in small groups. Communication Research, 37(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650209351468
37.
GoodwinG. P.PiazzaJ.RozinP. (2014). Moral character predominates in person perception and evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(1), 148–168. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034726
38.
GreggA. P.SeibtB.BanajiM. R. (2006). Easier done than undone: Asymmetry in the malleability of implicit preferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.1.1
39.
HamakerE. L.NesselroadeJ. R.MolenaarP. C. M. (2007). The integrated trait–state model. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(2), 295–315. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2006.04.003
40.
HayesS. C.SanfordB. T. (2014). Cooperation came first: Evolution and human cognition: Cooperation and cognition. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 101(1), 112–129. https://doi.org/10.1002/jeab.64
HesseF.CareE.BuderJ.SassenbergK.GriffinP. (2015). A framework for teachable collaborative problem solving skills. In GriffinP.CareE. (Eds.), Assessment and teaching of 21st century skills (pp. 37–56). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9395-7_2
43.
HughesB. L.ZakiJ.AmbadyN. (2017). Motivation alters impression formation and related neural systems. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(1), 49–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw147
44.
HumanL. J.CarlsonE. N.GeukesK.NestlerS.BackM. D. (2020). Do accurate personality impressions benefit early relationship development? The bidirectional associations between accuracy and liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(1), 199–212. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000214
45.
HumbergS.DufnerM.SchönbrodtF. D.GeukesK.HuttemanR.Van ZalkM. H. W.DenissenJ. J. A.NestlerS.BackM. D. (2018). Enhanced versus simply positive: A new condition-based regression analysis to disentangle effects of self-enhancement from effects of positivity of self-view. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(2), 303–322. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000134
46.
HungW. (2013). Team-based complex problem solving: A collective cognition perspective. Educational Technology Research and Development, 61(3), 365–384. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-013-9296-3
47.
IdsonL. C.MischelW. (2001). The personality of familiar and significant people: The lay perceiver as a social–cognitive theorist. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(4), 585–596. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.4.585
48.
JussimL.NelsonT. E.ManisM.SoffinS. (1995). Prejudice, stereotypes, and labeling effects: Sources of bias in person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(2), 228–246.
49.
KaneA. A.Van SwolL. M. (2023). Using linguistic inquiry and word count software to analyze group interaction language data. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 27(3), 188–201. https://doi.org/10.1037/gdn0000195
50.
KarpinskiA.HiltonJ. L. (2001). Attitudes and the implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(5), 774–788. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.5.774
51.
KennyD. A. (2004). PERSON: A general model of interpersonal perception. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(3), 265–280. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0803_3
52.
KennyD. A.AcitelliL. K. (2001). Accuracy and bias in the perception of the partner in a close relationship. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(3), 439–448. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.80.3.439
53.
KimM.ParkB.YoungL. (2020). The psychology of motivated versus rational impression updating. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 24(2), 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2019.12.001
54.
KleinW. M.KundaZ. (1992). Motivated person perception: Constructing justifications for desired beliefs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28(2), 145–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(92)90036-J
55.
KoriatA.Levy-SadotR. (2001). The combined contributions of the cue-familiarity and accessibility heuristics to feelings of knowing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(1), 34–53. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.27.1.34
56.
KörnerR.AltmannT. (2023). Personality is related to satisfaction in friendship dyads, but similarity is not: Understanding the links between the big five and friendship satisfaction using actor-partner interdependence models. Journal of Research in Personality, 107, Article 104436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2023.104436
57.
KrossE.AydukO. (2011). Making meaning out of negative experiences by self-distancing. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 187–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411408883
58.
KruseF.DegnerJ. (2021). Spontaneous state inferences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(4), 774–791. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000232
59.
KubeT.RozenkrantzL. (2021). When beliefs face reality: An integrative review of belief updating in mental health and illness. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(2), 247–274. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620931496
60.
KurdiB.CharlesworthT. E. S. (2023). A 3D framework of implicit attitude change. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(8), 745–758. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.05.009
61.
KurdiB.MorehouseK. N.DunhamY. (2023). How do explicit and implicit evaluations shift? A preregistered meta-analysis of the effects of co-occurrence and relational information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(6), 1174–1202. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000329
62.
LandyJ. F.PiazzaJ.GoodwinG. P. (2016). When it’s bad to be friendly and smart: The desirability of sociability and competence depends on morality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 42(9), 1272–1290. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167216655984
63.
LeisingD.OstrovskiO.ZimmermannJ. (2013). “Are we talking about the same person here?”: Interrater agreement in judgments of personality varies dramatically with how much the perceivers like the targets. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4(4), 468–474. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550612462414
LyonsM.AksayliN. D.BrewerG. (2018). Mental distress and language use: Linguistic analysis of discussion forum posts. Computers in Human Behavior, 87, 207–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.035
66.
MalleB. F.KnobeJ. M.NelsonS. E. (2007). Actor-observer asymmetries in explanations of behavior: New answers to an old question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(4), 491–514. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.4.491
67.
MalleB. F.PearceG. E. (2001). Attention to behavioral events during interaction: Two actor–observer gaps and three attempts to close them. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 278–294. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.278
68.
MathieuJ. E.GallagherP. T.DomingoM. A.KlockE. A. (2019). Embracing complexity: reviewing the past decade of team effectiveness research. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 6(1), 17–46. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012218-015106
69.
MaxwellS. E.ColeD. A. (2007). Bias in cross-sectional analyses of longitudinal mediation. Psychological Methods, 12(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.12.1.23
70.
MeltzoffA. N. (1988). Infant imitation after a 1-week delay: Long-term memory for novel acts and multiple stimuli. Developmental Psychology, 24(4), 470–476. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.24.4.470
71.
Mende-SiedleckiP.BaronS. G.TodorovA. (2013). Diagnostic value underlies asymmetric updating of impressions in the morality and ability domains. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(50), 19406–19415. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2334-13.2013
72.
MontoyaR. M.HortonR. S. (2013). A meta-analytic investigation of the processes underlying the similarity-attraction effect. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30(1), 64–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407512452989
73.
MontoyaR. M.HortonR. S.VeveaJ. L.CitkowiczM.LauberE. A. (2017). A re-examination of the mere exposure effect: The influence of repeated exposure on recognition, familiarity, and liking. Psychological Bulletin, 143(5), 459–498. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000085
74.
MorelandR. L.ZajoncR. B. (1982). Exposure effects in person perception: Familiarity, similarity, and attraction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18(5), 395–415. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(82)90062-2
75.
MorryM. M. (2007). The attraction-similarity hypothesis among cross-sex friends: Relationship satisfaction, perceived similarities, and self-serving perceptions. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 24(1), 117–138. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407507072615
76.
MorryM. M.KitoM.OrtizL. (2011). The attraction–similarity model and dating couples: Projection, perceived similarity, and psychological benefits. Personal Relationships, 18(1), 125–143. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2010.01293.x
77.
MorryM. M.ReichT.KitoM. (2010). How do I see you relative to myself? Relationship quality as a predictor of self- and partner-enhancement within cross-sex friendships, dating relationships, and marriages. The Journal of Social Psychology, 150(4), 369–392. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224540903365471
78.
MussweilerT. (2003). Comparison processes in social judgment: Mechanisms and consequences. Psychological Review, 110(3), 472–489. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.110.3.472
79.
NeubertJ. C.MainertJ.KretzschmarA.GreiffS. (2015). The assessment of 21st century skills in industrial and organizational psychology: Complex and collaborative problem solving. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8(2), 238–268. https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2015.14
80.
OttenS. (2016). The Minimal Group Paradigm and its maximal impact in research on social categorization. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 85–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.06.010
81.
ParkB.YoungL. (2020). An association between biased impression updating and relationship facilitation: A behavioral and fMRI investigation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 87, Article 103916. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103916
PennebakerJ. W.ChungC. K. (2013). Counting little words in big data: The psychology of individuals, communities, culture, and history. In ForgasJ. P.VinczeO.LászlóJ. (Eds.), Social cognition and communication (pp. 25–42). Psychology Press.
84.
PoppenkJ.KöhlerS.MoscovitchM. (2010). Revisiting the novelty effect: When familiarity, not novelty, enhances memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(5), 1321–1330. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019900
85.
ReederG. D.MessickD. M.Van AvermaetE. (1977). Dimensional asymmetry in attributional inference. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(1), 46–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(77)90012-9
86.
ReisH. T.ManiaciM. R.CaprarielloP. A.EastwickP. W.FinkelE. J. (2011). Familiarity does indeed promote attraction in live interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(3), 557–570. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022885
RosseelY. (2012). lavaan: An R package for structural equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, 48(2), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02
89.
SaegertS.SwapW.ZajoncR. B. (1973). Exposure, context, and interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 25(2), 234–242. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0033965
90.
SedikidesC.GreggA. P. (2007). Portraits of the self. In HoggM.CooperJ. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of social psychology: Concise student edition (pp. 93–122). SAGE. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608221.n5
SelsL.CabrietoJ.ButlerE.ReisH.CeulemansE.KuppensP. (2020). The occurrence and correlates of emotional interdependence in romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(1), 136–158. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000212
93.
SilverB. M.OchsnerK. N. (2024). Changes in online moral discourse about public figures during #MeToo. Affective Science, 5(4), 346–357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-024-00250-4
94.
SoralW.KoftaM. (2020). Differential effects of competence and morality on self-esteem at the individual and the collective level. Social Psychology, 51(3), 183–198. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000410
95.
StepanikovaI. (2012). Racial-ethnic biases, time pressure, and medical decisions. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 53(3), 329–343. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022146512445807
96.
StewartA. E. B.VrzakovaH.SunC.YonehiroJ.StoneC. A.DuranN. D.ShuteV.D’MelloS. K. (2019). I say, you say, we say: Using spoken language to model socio-cognitive processes during computer-supported collaborative problem solving. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 3, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359296
97.
StraussJ. P.BarrickM. R.ConnerleyM. L. (2001). An investigation of personality similarity effects (relational and perceived) on peer and supervisor ratings and the role of familiarity and liking. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74(5), 637–657. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317901167569
98.
TausczikY. R.PennebakerJ. W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29(1), 24–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X09351676
99.
TomaselloM.MelisA. P.TennieC.WymanE.HerrmannE. (2012). Two key steps in 1the evolution of human cooperation: The interdependence hypothesis. Current Anthropology, 53(6), 673–692. https://doi.org/10.1086/668207
100.
TomparyA.DavachiL. (2017). Consolidation promotes the emergence of representational overlap in the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex. Neuron, 96(1), 228.e–241.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.09.005
101.
TropeY. (1998). Dispositional bias in person perception: A hypothesis-testing perception. In DarleyJ. M.CooperJ. (Eds.), Attribution and social interaction: The legacy of Edward E. Jones (pp. 67–126). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10286-002
102.
WegnerD. M.GiulianoT. (1980). Arousal-induced attention to self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(5), 719–726.
103.
WesselsN. M.ZimmermannJ.BiesanzJ. C.LeisingD. (2020). Differential associations of knowing and liking with accuracy and positivity bias in person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118(1), 149–171. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000218
104.
WojciszkeB. (2005). Morality and competence in person- and self-perception. European Review of Social Psychology, 16(1), 155–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463280500229619
105.
WojciszkeB.BryczH.BorkenauP. (1993). Effects of information content and evaluative extremity on positivity and negativity biases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(3), 327–335. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.3.327
106.
YzerbytV. (2018). The dimensional compensation model: Reality and strategic constraints on warmth and competence in intergroup perceptions. In AbeleA.WojciszkeB. (Eds.), Agency and communion in social psychology (pp. 126–141). Routledge.
107.
ZajoncR. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2Pt. 2), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025848
108.
ZajoncR. B. (2001). Mere exposure: A gateway to the subliminal. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 10(6), 224–228.
109.
ZakiJ. (2013). Cue integration: A common framework for social cognition and physical perception. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(3), 296–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613475454
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
