What are my friends really like? How we change our perceptions of familiar others’ traits and actions
Year: 2024
Type: preprint
Abstract: In everyday life, our pre-existing relationships influence our perceptions of others’ traits and actions. We enrolled 142 participants in a virtual escape room to examine a) whether a novel challenge changed perceptions of friends’ traits, b) how prior relationships influenced trait perceptions, and c) how prior relationships biased perceptions of behavior. Higher pre-game similarity ratings led to increases in perceptions of competence, while higher pre-game liking ratings led to increases in perceptions of sociability. These same relational factors also biased perceptions of performance during the game. Our findings demonstrate the importance of real- world relationships not only for how we change our beliefs about others’ traits, but also their importance for perceptions of the very actions we use as evidence for those beliefs.
Institution: Columbia University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4391443825