Influences of appearance-behaviour congruity on memory and social judgements

Abstract

Prior work shows that appearance-behaviour congruity impacts memory and evaluations. Building upon prior work, we assessed influences of appearance-behaviour congruity on source memory and judgement strength to illustrate ways congruity effects permeate social cognition. We paired faces varying on trustworthiness with valenced behaviours to create congruent and incongruent face-behaviour pairs. Young and older adults remembered congruent pairs better than incongruent, but both were remembered better than pairs with faces rated average in appearance. This suggests that multiple, even conflicting, valenced cues improve memory over receiving fewer cues. Consistent with our manipulation of facial trustworthiness, congruity effects were present in the strength of trustworthiness-related but not dominance judgements. Subtle age differences emerged in congruity effects when learning about others, with older adults showing effects for approach judgements given both high and low arousal behaviours. Young adults had congruity effects for approach, prosociality and trustworthiness judgements, given high arousal behaviours only. These findings deepen our understanding of how appearance-behaviour congruity impacts memory for and evaluations of others.

Keywords:

• Trustworthiness
• Impression formation
• Source memory
• Social judgements
• Aging

We thank Avi Aizenman, Rebekah LaFontant, Alina Liu, Trent Judis and Tali Friedland for research assistance. We also thank Xiaodong Liu for his suggestions for statistical analyses.

The National Institute on Aging [grant number R21 AG032382] (to A.H.G.) and an NSF graduate fellowship (to B.S.C.) supported this work.

We thank Avi Aizenman, Rebekah LaFontant, Alina Liu, Trent Judis and Tali Friedland for research assistance. We also thank Xiaodong Liu for his suggestions for statistical analyses.

The National Institute on Aging [grant number R21 AG032382] (to A.H.G.) and an NSF graduate fellowship (to B.S.C.) supported this work.

Supplementary material

Supplemental material is available via the supplemental tab on the article's online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2014.951364).

Notes

¹ Judgements were stronger given high (M = 2.14, SD = 0.54) versus low arousal (M = 1.66, SD = 0.50), F(1, 62) = 214.83, p < .001, , and qualified by Judgement, F(3, 186) = 25.86, p < .001, . Given high arousal, dominance judgements (M = 1.98, SD = 0.57) were weaker than both approach [M = 2.20, SD = 0.69; F(1, 62) = 11.70, p = .001, ] and trustworthiness [M = 2.26, SD = 0.58; F(1, 62) = 19.76, p < .001, ] judgements. Trustworthiness judgements were marginally stronger than prosociality (M = 2.12, SD = 0.72) judgements, F(1, 62) = 2.95, p = .09, . There was no difference between dominance and prosociality judgements [F(1, 62) = 2.80, p = .10, ] and between approach and trustworthiness [F(1, 62) = 1.11, p = .30, ] or prosociality [F(1, 62) = 1.38, p = .25, ] judgements. Given low arousal, participants made stronger dominance (M = 1.74, SD = 0.54) than prosociality [M = 1.59, SD = 0.64; F(1, 62) = 4.35, p = .04, ] judgements. Participants made marginally stronger dominance than trustworthiness judgements (M = 1.65, SD = 0.53), F(1, 62) = 2.88, p = .095, . There was no difference between dominance and approach (M = 1.66, SD = 0.60) judgements, F(1, 62) = 1.69, p = .20, . There were no differences between trustworthiness judgements and approach [F(1, 62) = 0.12, p = .73, ] and prosociality [F(1, 62) = 0.93, p = .34, ] judgements and between approach and prosociality judgements [F(1, 62) = 1.36, p = .25, ]. No other findings in the experiment were significant, ps > .14.