The effect of interpersonal distance and background context on trait impressions

Veranic, Kristina, Bayliss, Andrew, Stephen, Ian D, Zhao, Mintao and Ewing, Louise (2026) The effect of interpersonal distance and background context on trait impressions. Acta Psychologica, 266. ISSN 0001-6918

Microsoft Word (rba08-Bayliss_etal_The_effect_o) - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (949kB)

Abstract

People rapidly form trait impressions of other individuals that they encounter based on their visual appearance. Such opinions are made with consensus between observers, yet external factors can also influence judgments. Here, we investigated the effects of two potentially important external factors—interpersonal distance and background context—by manipulating these variables while participants evaluated life-sized whole-person stimuli. Participants rated attractiveness, competence, dominance, and trustworthiness of target figures presented to them at near and far distances with different positively or negatively valenced backgrounds that were ambient (Experiment 1: beach vs. fire scenes) or social (Experiment 2: happy vs. disgusted flanking figures). We predicted that targets would be rated more favourably in positive vs. negative background contexts, and that this effect may interact with interpersonal distance (at far distances people may rely relatively more on background cues). This is the first investigation of how these two factors jointly shape a broad set of trait impressions under naturalistic (life-sized, whole-body) viewing conditions. Results broadly confirmed a strong influence of background context tested; however, the predicted interaction with interpersonal distance was observed selectively for trustworthiness judgements in a social background context (Experiment 2). Together, our findings provide first evidence of an influence of context on different trait judgements and suggest trait-selective differences in the integration of such cues with distance.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability: The design and analysis plan were pre-registered (https://aspredicted.org/zn9qq.pdf) and anonymised data and materials is available via OSF (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/DU3SK).
Uncontrolled Keywords:	person perception,trait attribution,interpersonal distance,affective scenes,social context,affective context,3* ,/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/REFrank/3_
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Social Cognition Research Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	09 Apr 2026 09:30
Last Modified:	11 Apr 2026 00:22
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/102721
DOI:

Downloads

Actions (login required)

View Item