Rating Traits Together or Apart: Presentation Format Affects First Impression Judgements.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Perception Research

Background:

• Researchers often collect multiple perceptual judgments from the same stimuli and participants.
• Task design's impact on perceptual judgment data is under-researched.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate how two common methods of collecting multiple perceptual ratings affect judgments of facial first impressions.
• Compare blocked vs. listed presentation formats for collecting multiple ratings.

Main Methods:

• Two participant groups rated seven person characteristics of faces.
• One group used a blocked format (one characteristic at a time).
• The other group used a listed format (all characteristics simultaneously).

Main Results:

• The listed format reduced task duration by 22% but decreased data quality.
• Inter-rater agreement was lower for youthfulness, femininity, and trustworthiness in the listed format.
• Ratings showed reduced variance and universally positive correlations between characteristics in the listed format, indicating bias.

Conclusions:

• Presenting multiple judgments simultaneously (listed format) can introduce systematic biases and reduce data reliability.
• A blocked presentation format is suggested for collecting multiple perceptual judgments to ensure data quality.
• Researchers should consider these trade-offs when designing experiments involving multiple perceptual judgments.