The Vertical Dimension of Social Relations and Accurate Interpersonal Perception: A Meta-Analysis

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior

Volumn 39, Issue 2, 2015, Pages 131-163

  Hall, Judith A ^a   Schmid Mast, Marianne ^b   Latu, Ioana Maria ^c  

^a NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF LAUSANNE   (Switzerland)

^c RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Accuracy of interpersonal perception; Dominance; Emotion recognition; Power; Recall; SES; Verticality

Indexed keywords

EID: 84940006054     PISSN: 01915886     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10919-014-0205-1     Document Type: Review

References (126)

1. Alkire, A. A., Collum, M. E., Kaswan, J., & Love, L. R. (1968). Information exchange and accuracy of verbal communication under social power conditions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9, 301–308. I
2. *Alvarez, G., & Fuentes, P. (1994). Recognition of facial expression in diverging socioeconomic levels. Brain and Cognition, 25, 235–239. T
3. Ambady, N., & Gray, H. M. (2002). On being sad and mistaken: Mood effects on the accuracy of thin-slice judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,83, 947–961.
4. Ambady, N., & Skowronski, J. J. (Eds.). (2008). First impressions. New York: Guilford.
5. Anderson, C., & Berdahl, J. L. (2002). The experience of power: Examining the effects of power on approach and inhibition tendencies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,83, 1362–1377.
6. *Bachmann, M., & Schmid Mast, M. (2010). Unpublished data. T
7. *Bachmann, M., & Schmid Mast, M. (2011). Unpublished data. T
8. *Bailey, W., Nowicki, S., Jr., & Cole, S. P. (1998). The ability to decode nonverbal information in African American, African and Afro-Caribbean, and European American Adults. Journal of Black Psychology, 24, 418–431. T
9. *Barnes, M. L., & Sternberg, R. J. (1989). Social intelligence and decoding of nonverbal cues. Intelligence, 13, 263–287. T
10. *Barreto, M., Ellemers, N., & Fiske, S. T. (2010). “What did you say, and who do you think you are?” How power differences affect emotional reactions to prejudice. Journal of Social Issues, 66, 477–492. T
11. Berdahl, J. L., & Martorana, P. (2006). Effects of power on emotion and expression during a controversial group discussion. European Journal of Social Psychology,36, 497–509.
12. Bernieri, F. J. (2001). Toward a taxonomy of interpersonal sensitivity. In J. A. Hall & F. J. Bernieri (Eds.), Interpersonal sensitivity: Theory and measurement (pp. 3–20). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
13. Blanch-Hartigan, D., Andrzejewski, S., & Hill, K. (2012). The effectiveness of training to improve person perception accuracy: A meta-analysis. Basic and Applied Social Psychology,34, 483–498.
14. Borenstein, M., Hedges, L., Higgins, J., & Rothstein, H. (2005). Comprehensive meta-analysis (2nd ed.). Englewood, NJ: Biostat.
15. *Boucher, E. M., Hancock, J. T., & Dunham, P. J. (2008). Interpersonal sensitivity in computer-mediated and face-to-face conversations. Media Psychology, 11, 235–258. I
16. Bugental, D. B. (2010). Paradoxical power manifestations: Power assertion by the subjectively powerless. In A. Guinote & T. K. Vescio (Eds.), The social psychology of power (pp. 209–230). New York: Guilford.
17. *Byron, K. (2003). Are better managers better at “reading” others? Testing the claim that emotional intelligence predicts managerial performance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA. T
18. Byron, K. (2007). Male and female managers’ ability to read emotions: Relationships with supervisor’s performance ratings and subordinates’ satisfaction ratings. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology,80, 713.
19. Byron, K., Terranova, S., & Nowicki, S., Jr. (2007). Nonverbal emotion recognition and salespersons: Linking ability to perceived and actual success. Journal of Applied Social Psychology,37, 2600–2619.
20. *Carney, D. R. (2009). Unpublished data. T
21. *Casciaro, T. (1998). Seeing things clearly: Social structure, personality, and accuracy in social network perception. Social Networks, 20, 331–351. I
22. Chepenik, L. G., Cornew, L. A., & Farah, M. J. (2007). The influence of sad mood on cognition. Emotion,7, 802–811.
23. *Cook, K. E. (2002). Target and perceiver gender in person perception: Power as a possible explanation for gender differences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of Psychology, University of Washington. T
24. *Côté, S., Kraus, M. W., Cheng, B. H., Oveis, C., Van der Löwe, I., Lian, H., et al. (2011). Social power facilitates the effect of prosocial orientation on empathic accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 217–232. I, T
25. *Delgado-Hachey, M., & Miller, S. A. (1993). Mothers’ accuracy in predicting their children’s IQs: Its relationship to antecedent variables, mothers’ academic achievement demands, and children’s achievement. Journal of Experimental Education, 62, 43–59. I
26. Demenescu, L. R., Kortekaas, R., den Boer, J. A., & Aleman, A. (2010). Impaired attribution of emotion to facial expressions in anxiety and major depression. PLos ONE, 5, Article e15058.
27. DeWall, C. N., Baumeister, R. F., Mead, N. L., & Vohs, K. D. (2011). How leaders self-regulate their task performance: Evidence that power promotes diligence, depletion, and disdain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,100, 47–65.
28. DiMatteo, M. R., Friedman, H. S., & Taranta, A. (1979). Sensitivity to bodily nonverbal communication as a factor in practitioner–patient rapport. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior,4, 18–26.
29. DiMatteo, M. R., Hays, R. D., & Prince, L. M. (1986). Relationship of physicians’ nonverbal communication skill to patient satisfaction, appointment noncompliance, and physician workload. Health Psychology,5, 581–594.
30. Elfenbein, H. A., Foo, M. D., White, J., Tan, H. H., & Aik, V. C. (2007). Reading your counterpart: The benefit of emotion recognition accuracy for effectiveness in negotiation. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior,31, 205–223.
31. Ellyson, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (1985). Power, dominance, and nonverbal behavior: Basic concepts and issues. In S. L. Ellyson & J. F. Dovidio (Eds.), Power, dominance, and nonverbal behavior (pp. 1–27). New York: Springer.
32. Exline, R. V. (1960). Interrelations among two dimensions of sociometric status, group congeniality and accuracy of social perception. Sociometry,23, 85–101.
33. Fiske, S. T. (1993). Controlling other people: The impact of power on stereotyping. American Psychologist,48, 621–628.
34. Funder, D. C. (1995). On the accuracy of personality judgment: A realistic approach. Psychological Review,102, 652–670.
35. *Funder, D. C., & Harris, M. J. (1986). On the several facets of personality assessment: The case of social acuity. Journal of Personality, 54, 528–550. T
36. Galinsky, A. D., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Magee, J. C. (2003). From power to action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,85, 453–466.
37. *Galinsky, A. D., Magee, J. C., Inesi, M. E., & Gruenfeld, D. H. (2006). Power and perspectives not taken. Psychological Science, 17, 1068–1074. T
38. Gasper, K., & Clore, G. L. (2002). Attending to the big picture: Mood and global versus local processing of visual information. Psychological Science,13, 34–40.
39. Gesn, P. R., & Ickes, W. (1999). The development of meaning contexts for empathic accuracy: Channel and sequence effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,77, 746–761.
40. *Gonzaga, G. C., Keltner, D., & Ward, D. (2008). Power in mixed-sex stranger interactions. Cognition and Emotion, 22, 1555–1568. I
41. *Gordon, A. M., & Chen, S. (2012). Unpublished data. I
42. Guinote, A. (2010). The situated focus theory of power. In A. Guinote & T. K. Vescio (Eds.), The social psychology of power (pp. 141–174). New York: Guilford.
43. Guinote, A., & Vescio, T. K. (Eds.). (2010). The social psychology of power. New York: Guilford.
44. Hall, J. A. (1984). Nonverbal sex differences: Communication accuracy and expressive style. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
45. *Hall, J. A. (2001). Unpublished data. I
46. Hall, J. A., Andrzejewski, S. A., & Yopchick, J. E. (2009a). Psychosocial correlates of interpersonal sensitivity: A meta-analysis. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior,33, 149–180.
47. Hall, J. A., Blanch, D. C., Horgan, T. G., Murphy, N. A., Rosip, J. C., & Schmid Mast, M. (2009b). Motivation and interpersonal sensitivity: Does it matter how hard you try? Motivation and Emotion,33, 291–302.
48. *Hall, J. A., Carter, J. D., & Horgan, T. G. (2001). Status roles and recall of nonverbal cues. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 25, 79–100. I
49. Hall, J. A., Coats, E. J., & Smith LeBeau, L. (2005). Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin,131, 898–924.
50. Hall, J. A., & Gunnery, S. D. (2013). Gender differences in nonverbal communication. In J. A. Hall & M. L. Knapp (Eds.), Handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 639–669). Berlin: deGruyter Mouton.
51. *Hall, J. A., & Halberstadt, A. G. (1994). “Subordination” and sensitivity to nonverbal cues: A study of married working women. Sex Roles, 31, 149–165. T
52. Hall, J. A., & Halberstadt, A. G. (1997). Subordination and nonverbal sensitivity: A hypothesis in search of support. In M. R. Walsh (Ed.), Women, men, and gender: Ongoing debates (pp. 120–133). New Haven: Yale University Press.
53. *Hall, J. A., Halberstadt, A. G., & O’Brien, C. E. (1997). “Subordination” and nonverbal sensitivity: A study and synthesis of findings based on trait measures. Sex Roles, 37, 295–317. T
54. Hall, J. A., & Schmid Mast, M. (2007). Sources of accuracy in the empathic accuracy paradigm. Emotion,7, 438–446.
55. *Hall, J. A., Murphy, N. A., & Carney, D. R. (2006a). On the varieties of asymmetrical dependency: Feelings, motives, behavior, and accuracy in a dyadic interaction. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 583–599. I
56. Hall, J. A., Murphy, N. A., & Schmid Mast, M. (2006b). Recall of nonverbal cues: Exploring a new definition of interpersonal sensitivity. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior,30, 141–155.
57. *Hall, J. A., Rosip, J. C., Smith LeBeau, L., Horgan, T. G., & Carter, J. D. (2006c). Attributing the sources of accuracy in unequal-power dyadic communication: Who is better and why? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 18–27. I
58. Hall, J. A., Roter, D. L., Blanch, D. C., & Frankel, R. M. (2009c). Nonverbal sensitivity in medical students: Implications for clinical interactions. Journal of General Internal Medicine,24, 1217–1222.
59. Hänggi, Y. (2004). Stress and emotion recognition: An internet experiment using stress induction. Swiss Journal of Psychology,63, 113–125.
60. Henley, N. M. (1977). Body politics: Power, sex, and nonverbal communication. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
61. Hunter, L. R., Buckner, J. D., & Schmidt, N. B. (2009). Interpreting facial expressions: The influence of social anxiety, emotional valence, and race. Journal of Anxiety Disorders,23, 482–488.
62. Johnson, S. D., & Bechler, C. (1998). Examining the relationship between listening effectiveness and leadership emergence: Perceptions, behaviors, and recall. Small Group Research,29, 452–471.
63. *Jowett, S., & Clark-Carter, D. (2006). Perceptions of empathic accuracy and assumed similarity in the coach–athlete relationship. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 617–637. I
64. Keltner, D., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Anderson, C. (2003). Power, approach, and inhibition. Psychological Review,110, 265–284.
65. Kerr, R., Garvin, J., Heaton, N., & Boyle, E. (2006). Emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness. Leadership and Organization Development Journal,27, 265–279.
66. Kombos, N. A., & Fournet, G. P. (1985). Effects of dominance-submissiveness and gender on recognition of nonverbal emotional cues. Educational and Psychological Research, 5, 19–28. T
67. *Krackhardt, D. (1990). Assessing the political landscape: Structure, cognition, and power in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, 342–369. I
68. *Kraus, M. W., Côté, S., & Keltner, D. (2010). Social class, contextualism, and empathic accuracy. Psychological Science, 21, 1716–1723. I, T
69. Kraus, M. W., Piff, P. K., Mendoza-Denton, R., Rheinschmidt, M. L., & Keltner, D. (2012). Social class, solipsism, and contextualism: How the rich are different from the poor. Psychological Review,119, 546–572.
70. *Kunstman, J. W., & Maner, J. K. (2011). Sexual overperception: Power, mating motives, and biases in social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 282–294. I
71. LaFrance, M., & Henley, N. M. (1997). On oppressing hypotheses: Or, differences in nonverbal sensitivity revisited. In M. R. Walsh (Ed.), Women, men, and gender: Ongoing debates (pp. 104–119). New Haven: Yale University Press.
72. Lammers, J., Galinsky, A. D., Gordijn, E. H., & Otten, S. (2008). Illegitimacy moderates the effects of power on approach. Psychological Science,19, 558–564.
73. Langner, C. A., & Keltner, D. (2008). Social power and emotional experience: Actor and partner effects within dyadic interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,44, 848–856.
74. *Letzring, T. D. (2008). The good judge of personality: Characteristics, behaviors, and observer accuracy. Journal of Research in Personality, 42, 914–932. I
75. Lipsey, M. W., & Wilson, D. B. (2001). Practical meta-analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
76. Lord, R. G., & Hall, R. J. (2005). Identity, deep structure and the development of leadership skill. Leadership Quarterly,16, 591–615.
77. *Lord, C. G., & Saenz, D. S. (1985). Memory deficits and memory surfeits: Differential cognitive consequences of tokenism for tokens and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 918–926. T
78. Magee, J. C., & Smith, P. K. (2013). The social distance theory of power. Personality and Social Psychology Review,17, 158–186.
79. Maner, J. K., Gailliot, M. T., Butz, D. A., & Peruche, B. M. (2007). Power, risk, and the status quo: Does power promote riskier or more conservative decision making? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,33, 451–462.
80. Martin, D., Slessor, G., Allen, R., Phillips, L. H., & Darling, S. (2012). Processing orientation and emotion recognition. Emotion,12, 39–43.
81. *McDonough, M. (1992). Gender and perceived power as predictors of accuracy in nonverbal decoding. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, California School of Professional Psychology. T
82. *Mill, A., Allik, J., Realo, A., & Valk, R. (2009). Age-related differences in emotion recognition ability: A cross-sectional study. Emotion, 9, 619–630. T
83. *Moeller, S. K., Lee, E. A. E., & Robinson, M. D. (2011). You never think about my feelings: Interpersonal dominance as a predictor of emotion decoding accuracy. Emotion, 11, 816–824. T
84. Mumford, T. V., Campion, M. A., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). The leadership skills strataplex: Leadership skill requirements across organizational levels. Leadership Quarterly,18, 154–166.
85. Murphy, N. A., & Hall, J. A. (2011). Intelligence and nonverbal sensitivity: A meta-analysis. Intelligence,39, 54–63.
86. Noller, P. (1980). Misunderstandings in marital communication: A study of couples’ nonverbal communication. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,39, 1135–1148.
87. Nowicki, S., Jr., & Duke, M. (1994). Individual differences in the nonverbal communication of affect: The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy Scale. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior,18, 9–35.
88. *Overbeck, J. R., & Park, B. (2001). When power does not corrupt: Superior individuation processes among powerful perceivers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 549–565. T
89. Overbeck, J. R., & Park, B. (2006). Powerful perceivers, powerless objects: Flexibility of powerholders’ social attention. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,99, 227–243.
90. Patterson, M. L. (1995). A parallel process model of nonverbal communication. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior,19, 3–29.
91. *Paulmann, S. (2011). Unpublished data. T
92. *Pfaff, P. L. (1954). An experimental study of the communication of feeling without contextual material. Speech Monographs, 21, 155. T
93. Phillips, L. H., Channon, S., Tunstall, M., Hedenstrom, A., & Lyons, K. (2008). The role of working memory in decoding emotions. Emotion,8, 184–191.
94. Phillips, L. H., Tunstall, M., & Channon, S. (2007). Exploring the role of working memory in dynamic social cue decoding using dual task methodology. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior,31, 137–152.
95. Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., Stallworth, L. M., & Malle, B. F. (1994). Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,67, 741–763.
96. Raudenbush, S. W. (2009). Analyzing effect sizes: Random-effects models. In H. Cooper, L. V. Hedges, & J. C. Valentine (Eds.), The handbook of research synthesis and meta-analysis (2nd ed., pp. 295–315). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
97. Riggio, R. E. (2001). Interpersonal sensitivity research and organizational psychology: Theoretical and methodological applications. In J. A. Hall & F. J. Bernieri (Eds.), Intepersonal sensitivity: Theory and measurement (pp. 305–317). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
98. Rosenthal, R. (1979). The file drawer problem and tolerance for null results. Psychological Bulletin,86(3), 638–641.
99. Rosenthal, R. (1995). Writing meta-analytic reviews. Psychological Bulletin,118, 183–192.
100. *Rosenthal, R., Hall, J. A., DiMatteo, M. R., Rogers, P. L., & Archer, D. (1979). Sensitivity to nonverbal communication: The PONS test. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. T
101. Rosete, D., & Ciarrochi, J. (2005). Emotional intelligence and its relationship to workplace performance outcomes of leadership effectiveness. Leadership and Organization Development Journal,26, 388–399.
102. *Rosip, J. C. (2006). Encoding and decoding ability in unequal-status dyadic communication: Status/power, emotion, and comfort. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northeastern University, Boston, MA.
103. Rubin, R. S., Munz, D. C., & Bommer, W. H. (2005). Leading from within: The effects of emotion recognition and personality on transformational leadership behavior. Academy of Management Journal,48, 845–858.
104. Russell, A. M., & Fiske, S. T. (2010). Power and social perception. In A. Guinote & T. K. Vescio (Eds.), The social psychology of power (pp. 231–250). New York: Guilford.
105. *Sabatelli, R. M., Buck, R., & Dreyer, A. (1982). Nonverbal communication accuracy in married couples: Relationship with marital complaints. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 1088–1097. T
106. *Saenz, D. S., & Lord, C. G. (1989). Reversing roles: A cognitive strategy for undoing memory deficits associated with token status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 698–708. T
107. *Sasson, N. J., Pinkham, A. E., Richard, J., Hughett, P., Gur, R. E., & Gur, R. C. (2010). Controlling for response biases clarifies sex and age differences in facial affect recognition. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 34, 207–221. T
108. *Scherer, K. R., & Scherer, U. (2011). Assessing the ability to recognize facial and vocal expressions of emotion: Construction and validation of the Emotion Recognition Index. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 35, 305–326. T
109. Schmid, P. C., Schmid Mast, M., Bombari, D., & Mast, F. W. (2011a). Gender effects in information processing on a nonverbal decoding task. Sex Roles,65, 102–107.
110. Schmid, P. C., Schmid Mast, M., Bombari, D., Mast, F. W., & Lobmaier, J. (2011b). How mood states affect information processing during facial emotion recognition: An eye tracking study. Swiss Journal of Psychology,70, 223–231.
111. *Schmid Mast, M. (2008). Unpublished data. T
112. Schmid Mast, M. (2010). Interpersonal behavior and social perception in a hierarchy: The Interpersonal Power and Behaviour Model. European Review of Social Psychology,21, 1–33.
113. *Schmid Mast, M., & Darioly, A. (2014). Emotion recognition accuracy in hierarchical relationships. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 73, 69–75. T
114. Schmid Mast, M., Jonas, K., Cronauer, C. K., & Darioly, A. (2012). On the importance of the superior’s interpersonal sensitivity for good leadership. Journal of Applied Social Psychology,42, 1043–1068.
115. *Schmid Mast, M., Jonas, K., & Hall, J. A. (2009). Give a person power and he or she will show interpersonal sensitivity: The phenomenon and its why and when. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 835–850. T
116. Sidanius, J., Pratto, F., van Laar, C., & Levin, S. (2004). Social dominance theory: Its agenda and method. Political Psychology,25, 845–880.
117. *Simpson, B., & Borch, C. (2005). Does power affect perception in social networks? Two arguments and an experimental test. Social Psychology Quarterly, 68, 278. T
118. Smith, P. K., Wigboldus, D. H. J., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2008). Abstract thinking increases one’s sense of power. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,44, 378–385.
119. *Snodgrass, S. E. (1985). Women’s intuition: The effect of subordinate role on interpersonal sensitivity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 146–155. I
120. *Snodgrass, S. E. (1992). Further effects of role versus gender on interpersonal sensitivity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 154–158. I
121. Snodgrass, S. E., Hecht, M. A., & Ploutz-Snyder, R. (1998). Interpersonal sensitivity: Expressivity or perceptivity? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,74, 238–249.
122. *Stokes, D. R. (1983). Nonverbal communication: Race, gender, social class, world view and the PONS test; Implications for the therapeutic dyad. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University. T
123. *Thomas, D. L., Franks, D. D., & Calonico, J. M. (1972). Role-taking and power in social psychology. American Sociological Review, 37, 605–614. I
124. Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2008). The automaticity of emotion recognition. Emotion,8, 81–95.
125. *Trefry, M. G. (1991). Power and perspective-taking: The perspective-taking accuracy of employees and managers. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University. I
126. Walter, F., Cole, M. S., van der Vegt, G. S., Rubin, R. S., & Bommer, W. H. (2012). Emotion recognition and emergent leadership: Unraveling mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions. Leadership Quarterly,23, 977–991.