Attitudes, personal evaluations, cognitive evaluation and interpersonal attraction: On the direct, indirect and reverse-causal effects

Perceptions of persons who wear face coverings are modulated by the perceivers' attitude

We examined if the effect of facial coverings on person perception is influenced by the perceiver's attitudes. We used two online experiments in which participants saw the same human target persons repeatedly appearing with and without a specific piece of clothing and had to judge the target persons' character. In Experiment 1 (N = 101), we investigated how the wearing of a facial mask influences a person's perception depending on the perceiver's attitude toward measures against the COVID-19 pandemic. In Experiment 2 (N = 114), we examined the effect of wearing a head cover associated with Arabic culture on a person's perception depending on the perceiver's attitude toward Islam. Both studies were preregistered; both found evidence that a person's perception is a process shaped by the personal attitudes of the perceiver as well as merely the target person's outward appearance. Integrating previous findings, we demonstrate that facial covers, as well as head covers, operate as cues which are used by the perceivers to infer the target persons' underlying attitudes. The judgment of the target person is shaped by the perceived attitude toward what the facial covering stereotypically symbolizes.

Mixed Methods in Analysis of Aggressiveness and Attractiveness: Understanding PE Class Social Networks with Content Analysis

The aim of this study is to detect and analyze the relationship between verbal aggressiveness and interpersonal attractiveness using four secondary-school PE classes in central Greece (88 nodes). Content analysis of open-ended questions, social network analysis, Spearman test and PCA have been implemented. Main results: scientific and social attractiveness are interrelated with a subsequent emergence of power structures and negatively related to verbal aggressiveness. Targets of verbal aggressiveness receive aggressiveness consisting of hurt, irony, rudeness and threat. The general grade and students’ tendency for distinction are positively related to attractiveness and negatively related to verbal aggressiveness. Types of targets of interpersonal attractiveness are proposed (“the untargeted powerful” and “the targeted powerful”).

A Two-Dimensional Model for the Study of Interpersonal Attraction

We describe a model for understanding interpersonal attraction in which attraction can be understood as a product of the initial evaluations we make about others. The model posits that targets are evaluated on two basic dimensions, capacity and willingness, such that affective and behavioral attraction result from evaluations of (a) a target’s capacity to facilitate the perceiver’s goals/needs and (b) a target’s potential willingness to facilitate those goals/needs. The plausibility of the two-dimensional model of attraction is evaluated vis-à-vis the extant literature on various attraction phenomena including the reciprocity of liking effect, pratfall effect, matching hypothesis, arousal effects, and similarity effect. We conclude that considerable evidence across a wide range of phenomena supports the idea that interpersonal attraction is principally determined by inferences about the target’s capacity and willingness.

Affective judgement about information relating to competence and warmth: an embodied perspective

Several studies have shown that social judgement may be defined by two dimensions, competence and warmth. From a functional perspective, embodied theories have proposed that warmth may be associated with physical distance, whereas competence may be connected to a vertical motion (UPWARD/DOWNWARD). Two main studies were conducted to examine if approach-avoidance and vertical motion could influence affective judgements about traits representing these two social dimensions. Valence judgements about warmth traits that were moving towards the subject resulted in more positive judgement than when they were moving away (approach/avoidance). Furthermore, competence traits were judged more positively when they moved in an UPWARD direction, compared with when they moved DOWNWARD. A metacognitive account of confidence is offered to explain how cognitions about warmth and competence are connected to the physical world.