Interpersonal Sensitivity

Definition and Measurement of IS

In daily life, people constantly notice the behavior and appearance of others. Behaviors may be verbal or nonverbal. Nonverbal behaviors include facial expressions, direction of gaze, head shaking and nodding, body movements and postures, hand and arm gestures, vocal qualities (such as pitch or rhythm), and interpersonal distance, among others. Appearance can refer to physiognomic features, such as facial features or body shape, or to details of dress, hair, jewelry, and so forth. As examples of this kind of accuracy, one might notice that one's spouse is not speaking much at breakfast, one might recognize an acquaintance at a distance from the way he walks, or one might remember that a particular friend likes to wear hoop earrings. This kind of IS is typically measured by having the test taker interact with someone or watch a videotape of people interacting and then testing the accuracy (without forewarning) of what he or she recalls about the others' behaviors or appearance.

Of course, people also draw conclusions based on what they have noticed, and they do this countless times per day, often without much conscious awareness. Is this car salesman telling the truth? Does my mother really like her Christmas gift? Is that stranger going to attack me? Is that cute person across the room interested in me? Inferences based on the cues a person perceives might or might not be correct. Most research on IS is concerned with accuracy in recognizing emotions or other affective states, accuracy in judging personality, and accuracy in distinguishing truth from deception. Accuracy for judging many other kinds of content has been, or could be, measured as well, including status and dominance, intelligence, mental and physical health, age, geographic origin, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Accuracy of interpersonal judgment is measured by researchers in a variety of ways, but all methods have in common that they require a criterion against which judgments can be scored as right or wrong. Thus, for example, on a test of judging the extraversion of a set of persons (targets) shown on videotape, the researcher must have a good measure of the targets' actual extraversion. IS tests vary in how many target persons are shown, how many different kinds of content are represented, and what cue channels are included. As an example, such a test might present six targets, each expressing four different emotions using facial expressions, for a total of 24 test items. On some IS tests [Page 903]perceivers judge a full audiovisual stimulus, whereas on others they judge single channels such as face only or voice only. IS test stimuli are typically short, ranging from less than a second to a few minutes in duration. Sometimes accuracy can be high, even when exposure to the stimulus is brief, although this depends on what is being judged. Accuracy levels depend on many factors and are notably low for judging deceptiveness and high for judging prototypical facial expressions of emotion (e.g., happy, sad, fearful).

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