Attributions of Personality Based on Physical Appearance

8/12/2019 Attributions of Personality Based on Physical Appearance

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JournalofPersonalityand SocialPsychology1986, Vol. 50, No. 4,792-799 Copyright1986bychcAmerican PsychologicalAssociation, Inc.0022-3514/86/HJ0.75

AttributionsofPersonalityBased onPhysicalAppearance,Speech,andHandwriting

RebeccaM. WarnerUniversity of NewHampshire

David B.SugarmanRhodeIslandCollege

The effect offacialappearance,speech style, and handwriting onpersonalityattributionswasexamined.Thesource consistencyhypothesispredicted thatanactorwillreceiveconsistentattributionsacrossallthree typesofinformation.Thedifferential information hypothesispredictedthatdifferentpersonalitydimensionsare used todifferentiatetheactorswithineachtypeof information. In a 3 X 6multivariateanalysisof varianceMANOVA)design,each judgerateda singleactor/information combinationonscales of socialevaluation,intellectualevaluation,activity,potency, emotionality, andsociability. Pho-tographsofactorswere differentiatedprimarily intermsofpositivesocialandintellectualevaluation;thespeechofactorswasdifferentiatedprimarilyalonganactivitydimension;and thewritingof theactorswasdifferentiatedprimarilyalong a potencydimension.Thisstudysupportedthedifferentialinformation hypothesisand suggestedthatthese three types ofinformationabout anactormay leadjudgesto usedifferent personalitydimensions.

Personperceptionstudies have shown that observers readilymake attributions about the personality traits, abilities, andemotionsofother persons basedonlimited information. Threetypesofinformation have been extensively studied: facial ap-pearance, expressive noncontentcharacteristicsofspeech(suchaspitch, tone,andtempo),andhandwriting. Numerous studieshavereported that facial featuresandexpression influence at-tributionsabout theattractiveness, pleasantness, intellectualandsocial skills,andmental healthof thetarget person(Adams,1977;Berscheid &Walster, 1974;Bull & Stevens, 1979; Dion, Ber-scheid, & Walster, 1972;Guise,Pollans, & Turkat, 1982; Jones,Hannson,&Phillips,1978;Unger,Hilderbrand,& Madar,1982).Observers seemtoapplyagenerally positive stereotypetopersonswhoarephysically attractive.

Therehasbeen less consensusaboutthekindsofattributionsthat aremade based onnoncontent characteristicsofspeech.Pitchandtempoaifectedratingsof competence and benev-olence (Brown,Strong, & Rencher, 1974). Acoustic parameterssuchaspitch variation, amplitude variation,andtempo corre-lated with ratings of pleasantness, activity, potency, and variousemotions (Scherer,1974).Attributions are made about sex, age,personality, social class,andethnicity basedonvariousspeechcharacteristics(Scherer&Giles, 1979). Ratingsofemotionalityhavebeen linked to speech patterns inotherstudies (Ostwald,1965;Williams&Stevens, 1972). Unlikethe findings onphysicalattractiveness, wheretheresults couldbesummarizedas apos-itiveevaluative stereotype ( what isbeautiful is good ), theredoesnotseemto be asingle principlethatdescribestheattri-butions giventononcontent stylisticcharacteristicsofspeech.

Wegratefully acknowledgetheassistanceofChristine Barwick, SusanCarroll, RobertFilocco, KathySchneider, andNancyWysockiin thedatacollection. ThankstoEllenCohn,RodneyTriplet, and ananonymousreviewerfortheircommentson adraft.

Correspondence concerning this article shouldbe addressed toRebeccaWarner,DepartmentofPsychology, UniversityofNewHampshire, Dur-ham,NewHampshire03824.

Therehasbeen less interestin the studyofhandwritingasexpressive behavior, possibly becauseitseemstoosimilartogra-phology.However, there are studies that document a relationbetween stylisticfeaturesofhandwriting (signature size, neatness,slant, etc.)andattributions thataremade aboutthewriter, eitherbytheselfor byothers.Judgments about self-esteem, dominance,potency,andintellectual competence varyas afunctionofsig-nature size (Aiken&Zweigenhaft, 1978;Zweigenhaft, 1977).Some investigatorsreportthat thereis astronger relation betweenthe handwriting style and attributions forfemalewriters thanformale writers (Bull&Stevens,1979; Jorgenson, 1977).

Theattributionsthatjudges make basedonappearanceandexpressive behavior may not agree with judgments made by cli-nicians or withresultsfromstandardized psychologicaltestsorwithself-reportsof theactorsabout theirinternalstates.Theissueofaccuracy inperson perception is acomplex one(cf.Cronbach, 1955)thatisbeyondthescopeofthis article.Here,theissueiswhether judgesformconsistentorconsensualattri-butions in response to aparticularexpressive behavior displaysuchas aspeechsample,and notwhether their attributionsarecorrect.Thefactthatactorsmay engage in impression manage-mentordeception furthercomplicatestheproblemof obtainingaccurate attributions about theactor'sinternal statesbasedontheactor'sexpressive behaviors (cf. Baron, 1981;Edinger&Patterson, 1983). However, even if there is not anisomorphicrelation between physical appearanceorexpressive behavior dis-playand the internal states of the actor, it may beusefulto ex-aminehow particular expressive behaviors influenceattributionsmadebyoutside observers.

Theanalysisofmultichannel communication hasbeen ad-dressedfromtwodifferentperspectiveswhicharerelevant here.The first perspective involves the study of expressive behavior asanimportant, andoftenneglected,means of personalityassess-ment (Allport, 1961).Accordingto HallandLindzey(1970),Allportand his colleaguescollectedextensive data on the physicalappearance andexpressive behaviorsofpersons.In onestudy,judgeswere askedtomatchthespeech of anactorwith other

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ATTRIBUTIONS OF PERSONALITY 793

informationabout that person such as physical appearance, gaitor handwriting, personality characteristics, age, occupation, andso forth.AllportandCantril (1934)found that matchesweremadeat better than chance levels, and suggested that this wasevidenceforconsistency amongtheexpressive behaviors emittedbyanindividual actor.Differences inexpressive behavior werequiteconsistent over timefor anindividual (Allport&Vernon,1933). Although therewassome redundancyin theinformationthat was available across channels, no one channel was an exactreplica of another channel in terms of theinformation aboutpersonalitythatit contained. In the presentstudy,one questionthatisaddressediswhether judgesgiveconsistent ratingstoactorswheneach judge receivesonlyonetypeofinformation aboutthe actor(facialappearance, voice, or handwriting).

Thesecond questionfocusesonperson perception,or the at-tributionsthatobservers make based on the appearance andbe-haviorof theactor. Many studiesofmultichannel communicationaskhowmuch weightisgiventoeach channelin forming theoveralljudgment, particularlywhentheinformationindifferentchannelsisdiscrepant (e.g., positive verbal content pairedwithnegativetoneofvoice). MehrabianandFerris(1967) foundthatattributions about positivityofattitudeweremore closely relatedtofacialexpressions than to vocalstyleor verbal content. Theirformula(OverallAffectJudgment= .07 XVerbal+ .38 X Vo-cal + .55 XVisual) provides estimatesof therelative importanceofthese three channels. Many other investigatorshave foundevidencefor visual primacy (seeDePaulo,Rosenthal,Eisenstat,Rogers,&Finkelstein, 1978,for areview).

Thereis analternateway toframethequestion about multi-channel communication. Several studies suggest that there maynot be a consistent set of weights that describe how observerscombine informationfromseveral channels. Instead,therelativeimportanceofchannelsmaydependon theattribute being judged(Ekman,Friesen, O'Sullivan, & Scherer, 1980). Specifically,ob-serversmight relyondifferentpersonality dimensionswhen theytryto decode visual communications thanwhenthey decodevocalstyleorverbal content.

Zuckerman,Amidon, Bishop,andPomerantz(1982)reportedthattherelative importanceoffaceandvoiceinjudgingaffectvaried, dependingon thetypeofaffect thatwasbeing judged.Toneofvoicewasabettersourceofinformationabout dominanceandsubmissiveness, whereasthefaceprovided moreinformationabout likingordisliking. BurnsandBeier (1973) alsofoundthatinformationchannels (vocalandvisual)differed withregardtotheamount of informationtheyconveyed about various moodstates; in particular, anxiety attributions wereinfluencedmorebythe vocalthanthe visual channel in their study although mostofthe other moods they examined (e.g.,anger,happiness, sadness)weredominated by visual information. It is also possible thatencodersdifferin theextenttowhich theyrelyonvisual versusaudiochannelsaswaysofencodingaffect (Berman, Shulman,&Marwit,1976);andthat decodersdifferintheirskillatdecodingparticular communication channels (Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo,Rogers, & Archer,1979).Situationalfactors are probably im-portantdeterminants of the choice of channels that are used tocommunicateaffect(Krauss,Apple,Morency,Wenzel,&Win-ton, 1981).

Atthis point,it may beuseful to askspecificquestions;forexample,when a judge is relying on visualinformationsuch as

facialappearance, does that judgeusedifferentpersonality oraffectivedimensions to describe the actor than when the judgeisrelyingon noncontent vocal style, handwriting, or other chan-nels?For instance, do judgesrelyprimarily on an evaluativedimensionwhenjudging physical appearance,andprimarilyona potency dimensionwhenjudging handwriting? The emphasishereis on theconsistencyanddifferentiationofjudgments ratherthanonaccuracy (cf.Bermanetal., 1976). Rather than predictingoverallprimacyof thevisual channel over other channels suchasvocal or verbal, it may be reasonable to predict that the visualchannelprovides relatively more informationaboutcertain di-mensionsofaffect orpersonality (suchas ageneral evaluativedimension); but that other channels might provide moreinfor-mation about other personality dimensions, suchaspotencyordominance.

Thepurposeof thepresent studyis to seewhether judgeswhoareprovided withonlyoneinformation channel(face, voice,handwriting)canconsistentlydifferentiatetheactors along severalpersonalitydimensions (social evaluation, intellectual evaluation,potency, activity,sociability, and emotionality). It is expectedthatdifferent dimensionswillbeusedforeach channel.Specif-ically,based on the studies just cited, it is predicted that therewillbeconsistencyin thejudges' attributions about both socialandintellectual evaluationgiventophotographs. Basedon theexistingresearchonhandwritingandpersonality attributions,itisreasonabletopredictthatjudges willgiveconsistent ratingsofpotency and possibly intellectual evaluation based on thehandwritingsamples. The existing data on attributions based onvoicedoesnotpermit clear-cut predictions,butjudgmentsofemotionalityandactivitymightbemade basedon noncontentvocalstyle.

Inthepresent study, three typesofinformation(photograph,speech sample, orhandwriting) were provided about6actors.Eachjudgesawonlyoneactor/information combination (e.g.,onlyPerson 1'shandwriting or Person 3's speech). The judgesrated thetargetonbipolar adjectives thatwerecombined intoscales measuring various kinds of attributions about the person-alityor ability of the target. Three hypotheses are proposed. Thefirsthypothesiscouldbetermedthesource consistencyoractorconsistencyhypothesis. This hypothesis predictsthatjudges willproduce similar personality attributionsforeach actor regardlessof the informationcondition; thatis, if Actor1 sfacialappearanceisratedashighonsocial evaluation (warmth,cheerfulness,op-timism,friendliness,attractiveness), then Actor 1's speech andhandwritingshould also receivehighratingsonsocial evaluation.Ifconsistent information about personality is extracted by thejudgesfromeachofthesethreetypesofinformation, this mightbetaken toimply that the physical appearance and behaviordisplayemittedby theactor containaconsistent message aboutpersonality thatissimilar acrossallthree channels(assuggestedbyAllport,1961).

Asecond hypothesiscan betermedthedifferential informationhypothesis.This suggests that the pattern of judgments abouttheactorswouldbedifferent foreach typeofinformation.It isproposedthatjudges might find it easy toformhigh consensusjudgments about a certain personality dimension for one typeofinformationanddifficult toformhigh consensus judgmentsusingthis dimension withother typesofinformation;for ex-ample,judges mightformhighconsensus judgments about ac-


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794 REBECCA M. WARNER AND DAVID B.SUGARMANtivity onlywhentheyarereactingtospeech,and notwhentheyareevaluatingphotographs andwritingsamples.

There could alsobe artifactualdifferencesin themean ratingsgiventoeachtype of information, forinstance,a tendency togivehigherratings ofintellectualcompetencefor writingsamplesthan forfacialappearance. Note thatthis is not thesameas thedifferential information hypothesis.

Method

Materials

Thestimuli were generatedin thefollowingmanner.All themembersofone section of the introductory psychology class were brought into thelab(N - 40). Each personwasallowedtimetobecomefamiliarwithapassage takenfroman art history textbook, and then was tape recordedwhilereading the passage out loud. This paragraph was selected in ordertostandardizethespeech content,and it wasneutralinemotional content.Nexteach person posed forfourcolor slides (head and shoulders only).The one slide that had the most natural looking smile and the best overalltechnical qualitywasselectedforuse. This selection procedure madeitpossible to standardize thefacialexpression; therwnsmilingphotographsvariedsomuchthat choosingnonsmilingphotographswouldhaveresultedinmuch variability in expressions. It should be noted that past researchsuggeststhat smilingfacesconveymoreinformationabout emotionalitythannonsmilingfaces;theresultsofthis study cannotsafelybegeneralizedto nonsmilingfaces. Finallyeach person was asked to copythe sameparagraph that was used for thespeechsampleontoan unlined sheet ofpaper usinga normalstyleof handwriting. The only constraint placedonthis task was that the entire paragraph had to fit on one side of an8 X 11 in.page. Thus there were three typesofinformationforeachactor:aheadandshoulders photograph,a taperecorded speech sample,and a handwriting sample. From the 40actorsavailable, onlythe 26women wereretainedfor use asactors.

1Sixactorswerechosenbyrandomselectionfromthis groupof 26.Random selectionwasused, rather than

systematic choice of models, to representlevelsof some previously de-terminedfactorsuch as physicalattractiveness, because the intent ofthisstudywas toexamineanecologically valid selectionofstimuli (cf.Brunswik,1956) rather than torigorouslycontrol the type ofinformationavailable to the judges. Thus, the actors do not represent extremes.2A6X3factorialdesignwas set up, inwhich18stimuliwereincluded3typesof information for 6actors. Multivariate analysisofvariance MA N -OVA )anddiscriminant analysiswereusedtoevaluate whetherthe set ofratings receivedbyeach actor,byeach typeofinformation,and byeachactorby informationcombination weresignificantly different.

Questionnaire Development

The dependent variables were six summated scales based on a ques-tionnaire consisting of bipolaradjective ratings and Likert type items.There were six dependent measures: scales measuring social evaluation,intellectual evaluation, potency, emotionality, activity,and sociability.The first three scales were created in an instrument development studyreported in detail in the Appendix. The factorstructure of the bipolaradjectiveratings in both the instrument developmentstudyand the mainstudy arepresented inTable 1.These three scalesaresumsofbipolaradjectiverating items that were grouped according tofactoranalysis re-sults,and the Cronbach alphas for these scales rangedfrom.776 to .706.The second set of three scales were taken from the Buss and PlominEmotionalityActivitySociability Impulsivity temperament rating system(EASI;1975), and the Cronbach alphas for these scales when applied byourjudges rangedfrom .82 to .65.

Table1Varimax-Rotated FactorStructuresfor the13Bipolar djectives

Questionnairedevelopment

Measure 1 II HI

Questionnaireconfirmation

II IIIAttractiveCheerfulFriendlyOptimisticWarmKnowledgahleCompetentResponsibleIntelligentSensibleStrongSturdyDominant

.219

.016

.137

.164

.150

.707

.558

.738,719.677.252.079.064

,395.704.650,629.748.093.271.113.196.117.039.038

-.001

.084

.180-.096

.122-.187

.140

.243

.050

.106

.063.647.755

.359JOO.714m.709.038.160.134.098.032.091.226.151

.158

.062

.013

.148

.118

.646

.630

.605

.560

.607

.136

.038

.143

.148

.250

.053

.264

.023

.076

.206

.048

.092

.038

.686m

.589

Note.Underscored numbers denote factor loadings greater than .30.

The ratings questionnaire consisted of the 13bipolar adjectivesthatwerechosen during the instrument development phase,9-filleritems (ad-ditional bipolar adjectives that were not included in the analysis), andtheBussand Plomin(1975) EASItemperament scales(fourscales,eachcontainingfive items, assessing emotionality, activity, sociability, andim-pulsivity).TheBussscales were chosen because they had previously beenusedtorate other persons (rather thanexclusivelyforself-rating),becausethe factor structure and reliability of the scales was extensively docu-mented, and because of the content areas they covered.

JudgesJudgeswere recruitedfromtheintroductory psychology subjectpool.Atotalof 404judges participatedin thestudy;65% ofthem were women.

Judges were asked whethertheyhad anypreviousfamiliarityorcontactwiththe actorstheywere rating. Any judges who werefamiliarwith theactorsor who had missing values on theadjectiveratingscaleswere elim-inatedfrom subsequent analyses, leaving anNof 382. Initial analyses

1Inchoosing actors,theresearchers deliberately avoidedthestrategyof tryingto obtainactorswho would beverydiversewithrespect to age,sex, social class or regional background, ethnicity, or educational level.Ifthemodelsdifferedin sex orage,forinstance,differencesin theper-sonalityratingstheyreceived could be attributable to sex or agestereo-types,and therewerenot enough models to systematically examine thesekinds ofdifferences. Sex ofactorwas a variable that was deliberatelyexcludedfromthe design because it would have greatly complicated theanalysis,and because it was notfeasibleto include a large enoughsampleofactors to examine both sex stereotypeeffectson ratings and variabilityofratings received by individualactorswithin each sex. We wished toexamineindividualdifferencesin the more usual sense.Thus,the selectionofmodels wasrestrictedto Caucasianfemalecollegestudents.

2The mean attractiveness ratings received by the 6femaleactors rangedfrom 1.75 to 2.31 (on a scalefrom0 to 4); whereasthisdifferencewasstatisticallysignificant,F(5,381)= 2.732,p= .019, it isclearthat thisrandom sampling procedure resulted in selection ofaverageattractiveness.Thiswouldtend to result in smaller correlations between attractivenessandother ratings than wouldbeobtainedif we haddeliberatelyselectedactorswho wereveryhigh andverylow onattractiveness.However, theuseof extreme groups to testforthe presence of relations generally resultsinoverestimation of the strength of relations (cf. Feldt, 1961).


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indicated thattherewere no significant differences in the ratings givenbymaleandfemalejudges,thereforesex was notincludedas afactorinthe analyses.

ProcedureAset of 6female actorswas chosen randomlyfrom thesamepool of

26actorsthat was used in the instrument development study.Therewere18conditions:6actorseachcontributed threetypes ofinformation photograph, speech sample,writingsample).Ineach condition,judges ratedonlyone of theactorby stimulus combinations inorderto avoidpossiblecarryovereffects. In theslidecondition,agroupofjudgeswas shown acolor slideof oneactorandaskedto fill out theratingquestionnaire. Theslide was displayed during theentireratingperiod.In thetapecondition,thetape(which wasabout 1 min induration)was playedoncebefore thejudgesbeganrating,andplayedasecondtimeabout5 minintotheratingperiod.In the handwriting condition,eachjudgewasgivenaphotocopyofoneactor'shandwritingandaskedtoratethewriter. Judgesinboththetapeandhandwritingconditionswereinformed thatthe content ofthemessage(aparagraphfroman art historytextbook)was provided tothe actor, andwere instructedtoignorecontent andfocuson the style ofthespeechor writing.

ResultsAfter preliminary data reduction through the formation of

summatedscales (asreportedin theAppendix), there weresixdependent variables. Three were person perception variablesderived from our own bipolar adjective ratings (social evaluation,intellectualevaluation,andpotency). Three were Buss temperament scales (Emotionality, Activity, and Sociability). Thesescalesare notorthogonal; correlations between these scales rangedfrom .383to+.688.Because there weresixcorrelated dependent variables, MANOVAwasusedtoevaluatethepredictive usefulnessof these six personality dimensions.

Multivariate Analysis of VarianceA 6 X 3 MANOVA was performed using the six personality

scales (socialevaluation,intellectualevaluation,potency,emotionality,activity,andsociability) asdependent variables. Thefactors were the six levels of theactor identity factor and thethree levels ofinformationtype (photograph,speech,and handwriting). Thus, each of the 18 cells in the design correspondedto anactor/information stimulus combination (e.g., Actor 1'sspeech, or Actor 4's handwriting). Type of Information wastreatedas a fixedfactor,andIdentity ofActorwastreatedas arandom factor, thus,the significancetestfor the main effect ofinformation type had to use the interaction component of themodelas theerrorterm. Becauseofunequalwithincell,thecomputational proceduresfornonorthogonalanalysisofvarianceANOVA with regressiontype partitioning of sums of squareswere used. Eacheffect wastested controllingfor allother effects.Theredid notappearto beserious violationsof theassumptionsofmultivariate normality. Each individual dependent variablehad an approximately normaldistribution,and the withincellcorrelation matrixwasreasonably homogeneousacrosstreatmentconditions.Thepooled withincellcorrelationmatrix amongthesixdependent variables isshowninTable2.Generallythecorrelations were low, except thatthe Busssociability scale correlated.503 withthesocial evaluation scaleand.541 withtheBussactivity scale.

For the overall MANOVA,allthreeof theeffectsweresignificant.For the Actor X Information Type interaction, A = .634, approximateF 60, 1886) =2.860,p


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796 REBECCA M. WARNER AND DAVID B. SUGARMANTable2Within-Cell CorrelationMatrixoftheSixScales

ScaleScale

1.SocialEvaluation2.IntellectualEvaluation3. Potency4.Activity5. Sociability6. Emotionality

Mean

.732.242

.139.371

.503-.1602.36

.604

.265

.203

.005-.1072.46

.785

.378

.222-.3301.89

.866

.541-.0612.09

.911-.2742.35

.6551.78

Note.Bothmeans andstandarddeviations are simple univariate results.*Standard deviationsare on thediagonal.

thepotency scale. For the tape recorded speech condition, thebasisonwhichthejudges apparentlydifferentiatedthe sixtaperecorded speech samples was primarily activity and social eval-uation.

A fewotherinferencescan betentatively drawn.Forinstance,althoughthesociability scalehad asignificantunivariateFratioforthedifferencesamong actorsin theslide condition,itappearsthatthissignificantresultmayhave occurred because sociabilityiscorrelatedwithtwoother scalesthatwere moreeffectivepre-dictors (the social evaluation and activity scales). The sociabilityscalecouldbeseenasredundant with these othertwoscales,anditappearstohavebeen lesseffectiveindescribing perceived dif-ferencesamongtheactors.Ingeneral,theresultsof thediscrim-

inantanalysis werefairlyconsistentwiththeunivariateFratiosthat are also reported in Table 3. Theonlyvariables that appearedlessuseful within thecontextof the multivariate model thanmighthavebeen expected fromtheunivariateFratioswereso-ciability(in theslide condition)andintellectual evaluation(inthe tape condition). Another consistent finding was that theemotionality scalewas not ausefuldiscriminatorin any of theinformationconditions.Thisreflectsthegenerally lower levelofconsensus among judgesintheirpreceptionsofemotionality.

Alarge beta weight, structurecoefficient, and univariate Fratiofor anytrait implies that disagreements among judges wererelativelysmall, and that actors received consistently differentratingson that trait variable. Thus,whena scale such as social

Table3Simple Effects AnalysisofActors WithinEachLeveloftheInformation Factor

Dimension1 Dimension 2

Handwritingcondition

Tapecondition

Univariate

Scale

Social EvaluationIntellectual EvaluationPotencyActivitySociabilityEmotionality

B

-.816.348

-.256-.177-.112-.029

re BSlidecondition

-.885 -.040.050 -.707

-.359-.564-.665

.190

.743-.686

.219

.132

re

-.273-.672

.296-.454-.047-.049

F

8.893.032.104.664.87.45

P


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ATTRIBUTIONS OF PERSONALITY 797evaluation is ausefulpredictor within the discriminant analysis,thissuggests that judges showed better agreementin their as-signment of ratings of social evaluation than in their assignmentofratingsofother variables suchasemotionality.Analternativemethodofassessing agreement among judgeswouldbe totreateachscale separatelyin aunivariateANOVAand use theintraclasscorrelation as anindexof reliability of the assessments made byeach individual judge.Thisunivariate analysis providesapictureof therelative importance ofvariables thatisgenerally similarto the picture that is obtained from the multivariate analysis,apartfromtheexceptions noted earlier.

Discussion

Twohypotheseswerediscussedin theIntroduction. This studydoes not provide strong support for the source consistency hy-pothesis; the significant anddisordinalinteraction between in-formationtype andactormakes itdifficultto interpret the sig-nificant differencesin the ratings received byactors. Thisstudyprovidesclearer supportfor thedifferentialinformation hypoth-esis,whichstatedthat each information type or communicationchannel provides information about different personality di-mensions. Airport'sstatement(1961)thattherewouldbesomeredundance across channels is not being disputed here. However,these results suggest that each communication channel (facialappearance, speech, handwriting) provides information aboutadifferentcollectionofpersonality dimensions,andthata partic-ularattribute(suchas potency) cansometimesbejudged moreconsistently fromone channel (such as handwriting) than fromother channels. Specifically, actorswere differentiated alongapotency dimension much more clearly basedon thehandwritingsamples than based on speech orfacialappearance.Actors weredifferentiatedalonganactivity dimension more consistently basedon their speech than basedonother communication channels.Forother personality attributes suchassocial and intellectualevaluation, judges wereable tomakethe mostconsistentdiffer-entiation amongactorsbasedon thefacial appearances.

Theresults obtained herearebasicallyinagreement with ear-lierresearch. Forinstance, thehandwriting research just citedhas consistently found correlations between potency typevariables (status,self-esteem,etc.) and variousfeaturesof hand-writingsuch as signature size, although some authorsfeel thatthis correlationmay existonlyforfemalewriters and not formales(Jorgenson, 1977).Inthisstudy, when judgeswere giventhe opportunity to make attributions using six personality scales,potencywas theonly scale that yielded consensus amongthejudges of handwriting samples.

Another point of agreement between this study and earlierfindingsisthe importance of the evaluative dimensions whenjudging physical appearance. Existing research on physical at-tractiveness suggeststhat whatisbeautiful isgood (Dion etal.,1972).Judgesinvokea generally positive personality stereo-typewhentheymakeattributions about the personality or abilitiesofphysically attractivepersons.In thepresent study, bothof theevaluative scales (Social and intellectual evaluation) showedgreaterconsensusamong judgesofslidesthanjudgesoftapesorhandwriting. However,the slidesalso elicited fairly consistentattributions about activity and sociability characteristics that wereonlymoderatelycorrelatedwith the evaluative scales.

Existingresearchdid notpointto asimple description of at-tributions basedontape recorded speech;in thepresentstudy,the judges of tapes showed the highest level of agreement whenjudgingactivity, andlowerlevels of agreement when udgingsocialevaluation,sociability,andintellectual evaluation. Given earlierresearch linking speech to judgments ofanxietyor emotionality,the inability of the judges to agree on the emotionality ratingsof tape recorded speech inthis study seems anomalous. Onepotential explanation isthat actors readanemotionally neutralparagraphfroma textbook probably limited the amount of in-formation about emotionality that was availablefrom speech.Therewaswide variabilityin theemotionality ratingsgiven,butjudgesdid notagree whichvoicesbelongedtomoreorlessemo-tional speakers. The lack of consensus among judges in ratingemotionalityfrom speech in this study may represent a meth-odological artifact rather thanageneral lackofemotional in-formation in speech.

This studyhasseverallimitations that restrict thetypesofconclusions that can be drawn. First, there wereonly6femaleactors.Theresultsmay bepartlydue topeculiaritiesoftheseparticularactors,andcertainlycannotbe generalized to malesuntilthe findingshavebeen replicated using maleactors.Second,theselectionofadjectivesandrating scales does not coverallpossible personality dimensions. TheOsgood,Suci,and Tan-nenbaum(1957)three dimensional semanticdifferential (eval-uation, activity, potency) guidedtheselectionofscales, becausenumerous studies in social psychology and nonverbal commu-nicationhave foundsome variantofthese dimensionsto beuseful(e.g.,Brownet al., 1974;Exline,1972; Hayes& Meltzer, 1972;Scherer, 1974; Wish, 1978).Thiswassupplemented with theBuss and Plomin(1975)temperament scales.However,there maywellbe other attributions that judges could make reliably basedonthese kinds of information that were not represented in theselection of scales used here. Third, the information types couldhavebeendefined differently, as instudies that distinguishbe-tween transcriptsofverbal content and content-filtered vocalcharacteristics. The intent indesigning thisstudy was to userelativelynaturalistic expressive behaviors; rather than askingactorsto act out specific emotions orattempt to conveyawarm or cold impression,thestimuli were obtainedby re-cordingtheactors'spontaneous reactionsto therequesttospeak,write, and pose for a photograph. Control over the specific in-formationcontentof thestimuliwassacrificedtoobtain someimprovement in the ecological validity (Brunswik, 1956) ofthesocial stimuli usedas thebasisfor thejudges'attributions.

Theresultsofthis study corroborate earlierfindings ofdiffer-ential information about personality contained infacialappear-ance, handwriting, and speech (cf. Burns & Beier, 1973; Ekmanetal.,1980;and Zuckermanetal.,1982).Theresults imply that,rather than attempting toshowhow much weight isgivento eachinformation channel in general, it may be necessary to ask howmuchweightisgiventoeachinformationchannelforeach spe-cificattribute that is being judged.

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AppendixRatingscalesweredeveloped in a preliminary instrumentdevelopment

study, usinga separategroupof 273judgestoprovide dataonfactorstructureandinternal consistency.For theinitial itempool,32pairsofbipolaradjectives were generated. Eight adjective pairs were chosen bythe principal investigators and their researchassistantsfor each of theMowingfourdomains: activity, potency, social evaluation, and intellectualevaluation. Face validity was the criterion for inclusion in this initialphase. A questionnaire was set up incorporating these 32 bipolaradjectivepairswith a 5-point rating scale. Ratingswereto be made relative to theaverage collegestudent. Thus, if the bipolar adjective pair quiet/noisywere rated on a 5-point Likert scale:aboutasnoisyas anaverage collegestudent(3);a little bit quieterthanaverage(2);muchnoisierthanaverage(5).The position of the more socially desirable adjective was varied ran-domly so that sometimes theleftside was the more socially desirable andsometimes the right side was the more socially desirable; however,tofacilitatescoring and analysis, thedatawererecededwith 5alwayscor-respondingto themore positiveend of thescale.Thequestionnaire alsoaskedfor thesex,age andyearincollegeof therater,andasked aboutpreviousfamiliarity withtheactor.

Agroup of 273 judges each rated one actor/information combinationusing the 32 bipolar adjectives. Thedatawerepooled across the 18con-ditionsandfactor analyzed. This procedure involvedtheimplicitas-sumption that there was homogenousfactorstructure across the 18con-ditions, an assumption that was not tested directly because the numberofsubjects within each cell was too small to obtain reliable estimates ofwithin-cellcorrelations and structure. The initial principalfactorsanalysiswasconducted withvarimaxrotation.All 32bipolaradjectiveswerein-cluded, and therewereseven factors with eigenvalues greater thanone.Examination of these factors indicated that the lastfourfactors consistedofsingle items or pairs of items. The set of eightadjectivesthat weresupposed todetectan activity dimensiondid notappear togetheronafactor; instead, these items tended toload moderately highlyon thefactors whichseemed primarily interpretable as intellectual evaluation,social evaluation, and potency. Based on this initial analysis it was decidedto retain five items as measures of intellectual evaluation; five items asmeasures ofsocialevaluation; and three items as measures of potency.

Asecond factor analysiswasperformed using this reducedset of 13items; therotated factorloadings are shown in Table 1. Factor 1 waslabeled anIntellectualEvaluationfactor;Factor 2 as aSocialEvaluationfactor;and Factor 3 was named a Potency factor. Beforerotation,thefirstthree factors accountedfor60% of thevariance,andonlythese threefactorshadeigenvaluesgreater thanone.

Scale scoreswerecreatedusingunweighted linear composites for eachofthese three groups of variables. Factor score coefficients could havebeen used to createfactor scores;however, simple unweighted linearcomposites were chosen for several reasons including simplicity; consis-tencyofscoringof the Buss scaleand the newscales created for thisstudy; and the availability of simple statistics such asCronbach'salphato describe the internal homogeneityforscales that are simple unweightedlinear composites.Cronbachalphas were calculatedtoassessthe internalhomogeneity of the scales created by averaging the scores for the groupsofitems. The social evaluation scale alpha was .773; the intellectual eval-uation alpha was .833; and the potency scale alpha was .747. Correlationsamong these three scales tended to be small; the largest correlation wasr = .354for the intellectual and social evaluation scales. These threescales seemed to summarize themajordimensions of person perceptionthat were implicit in our original selection of 32 adjectives reasonablywell.

After the results of the mainstudywereobtained, the ratings of the382 judgeswere factor analyzed to evaluate the stability of the factorstructure. The rotatedfactorloadings are reported in Table1.The resultswereessentially identical to those in the instrument development phaseexceptthatthe firstthreefactorsonlyaccountedfor 55% of thevariancepriortorotation,and theorderof thefactorswasdifferent.Alpha coef-ficientswerecalculated to assess the internal homogeneity of the threescales,whichwerecomposed of the same items that were used previously.There was someshrinkageof the alphas, but the scaleswerestillsufficientlyreliable to be used: the social evaluation scale alpha was .776; the intel-lectual evaluation scale alpha was.759;and the potency score alphawas.706.

Analysis was also done to check the internal consistency of the itemsin thefourBussEASIscales withinoursample. Alphas were.65 for theemotionality scale, .79 for the sociability scale, .82 for the activity scale,and.45 for theimpulsivityscale. Due to the low alpha value, the im-pulsivityscale was not included in subsequent analyses. Also, the itemis independent ofothers wasomittedfrom the Buss sociability scale,because it had a negative correlationwithother items on this scale formen and a positive correlation for women (Buss & Plomin, 1975, p.26).

ReceivedApril 4,1985Revision receivedAugust23,1985

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Attributions of Personality Based on Physical Appearance