NSF Award
1551822
Decision making is a process that is an essential, but challenging, aspect of people's personal and professional lives. Important decisions about another person are often based on first impressions. Impressions can include the emotional state a person is feeling at that moment, or "affect", and how that person generally thinks and acts: his or her personality traits. Making accurate judgments has vital effects on the actions people take. Judging that a person's affect is positive or negative allows people to decide whether approach or avoidance is best at that moment. Accurately judging traits is useful for the "who" and "how" of social living. People determine whom to approach with what goal in mind, and they anticipate how such interactions might unfold. Making good decisions in a variety of contexts is likely to lead to quality relationships or collaborations and avoidance of negative ones. This, in turn, may increase well-being, employee satisfaction, and productivity. Although accurately judging both affect and stable traits is crucial to making high quality decisions, researchers have developed models of these two kinds of judgments independent of each other. The current project provides an innovative merging of these areas of research, producing a model of how accuracy across these judgment areas may be related. The investigators will test the newly developed State and Trait Accuracy Model in four experiments. In addition, the project provides research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, and engagement in science for students in primary schools. <br/><br/>This project tests two hypotheses about the relationship and causal direction of people's accuracy in judging affect and judging traits. The State and Trait Accuracy Model predicts a positive relationship between such judgments, and further predicts that judgments of affect precede accurate judgments of personality traits. To test hypotheses about the accuracy of judging strangers, it is essential to have stimuli that display genuine emotions and responses, rather than staged or artificial affective displays. Thus, researchers from the three universities involved in this project have developed a validated database of stimuli consisting of videotapes of individuals whose personality traits and emotional state have been assessed. In the current project, experiments will use segments of these videotapes as stimuli for observers to make affect and trait judgments. Four experiments involve manipulating observers' judgmental focus and manipulating the validity of affect and trait information, either by mislabeling or by natural incongruences. Undergraduate and graduate students will be involved as researchers and participants in the project, providing research training opportunities. Children in local primary schools will benefit by exposure to presentations and research design experiences provided in their schools. Another benefit of this project is that the infrastructure for research is enhanced via this collaboration of researchers at three North American universities. In addition, society can benefit from an increased understanding of how affective states and personality traits can be judged more accurately--something useful to people in daily life as well as to professionals. For instance, the U.S. economy may benefit from employers being better able to determine the fit between applicants and jobs.
