Social vision is a sub-topic of social psychology that investigates the ways from which individuals extract information and perceive others using their vision alone. The field of social vision is highly interdisciplinary and located at the nexus of social psychology, communication studies, and vision science.Johnson, K. L., & Adams, R. B. (2013). Social Vision: An introduction. Social Cognition, 31 (6), 633-635.
Much of the research in social vision is based on the prevailing theory that the visual system is particularly attuned to social cues in the environment. More of the human brain is devoted to vision than all other senses combined, and social vision research seeks to understand how humans are able to use vision to accurately perceive characteristics of other individuals such as age, race, gender, and sexual orientation in a short time frame as well as how individual beliefs may bias the way humans perceive said individuals.
Historical development Social vision was developed as a research field in the early 2000s. The Science of Social Vision, an amalgamation of social vision research, was released in 2010,Adams, R. B., Jr., Ambady, N., Nakayama, K., & Shimojo, S. (Eds.), 2010. The Science of Social Vision. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. followed by a special edition issue of Social Cognition in 2013 that focused on social vision. The field developed at the intersection of social psychology and vision science, borrowing techniques from both fields to investigate social perception.
Thin-slice vision Thin-slice vision refers to the accuracy with which observers are able to correctly identify imperceptible characteristics of a person after watching the individual alone or acting in a group for only a short amount of time.Weisbuch, M., & Ambady, N. (2010). Thin-slice vision. In R.B. Adams, N. Ambady, K. Nakayama, & S. Shimojo, The Science of Social Vision (pp. 228-247). New York: Oxford University Press. When examining thin-slice vision, researchers provide anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes of recorded behavior to an observer who has no relationship with the recorded individual and no knowledge of the context of the recorded behavior. Thin-slice vision research has found that people are generally more accurate with inferences using visual elements of a scene alone rather than recordings that have both visual and auditory elements; therefore, it focuses exclusively on the use of visual stimuli.Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1992). Thin slices of expressive behavior as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 256-274. In addition, observers tend to be just as accurate in correctly guessing information about an individual in short time segments such as fifteen seconds of perception as they are during longer segments such as fifteen minutes.Murphy, N.A. (2005). Using thin slices for behavioral coding. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29, 235-246. As a result, thin-slice vision research is argued to be its own unique modality of social perception, separate from auditory perception and relying on very short time frames.
Individual characteristics Research has consistently demonstrated that thin-slice vision leads to highly accurate perception of individual characteristics. When they were examining personality, observers were able to accurately assess men's extraversion, interpersonal warmth, and sociosexuality levels after they watched a short, silent clip of the men being interviewed.Gangestad, S. W., Simpson, J. A., DiGeronimo, K. & Biek, M. (1992). Differential accuracy in person perception across traits: Examination of a functional hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 688-698. In a different set of studies, observers watched a silent clip of a man entering an empty room, reading a weather report, and then exiting the room; yet they were highly accurate in assessing his masculinity, extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism levels.Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A. (1993). Convergence of stranger ratings of personality and intelligence with self-ratings, partner ratings, and measured intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 546-553. Additional research has replicated these results while additionally finding that life satisfaction was perceivable in these thin-slices as well.Yeagley, E., Morling, B., & Nelson, M. (2007). Nonverbal zero-acquaintance accuracy of self-esteem, social dominance orientation, and satisfaction with life. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 1099-1106. One set of studies conducted in 2003 asked participants to view silenced clips of one minute or less depicting an individual engaging in an informal social interaction and found that observers were able to accurately assess the IQ of the observed person well above a chance.Murphy, N. A., Hall, J. A., & Colvin, C. R. (2003). Accurate intelligence assessments in social interactions: Mediators and gender effects. Journal of Personality, 71, 465-493. The relative power and status of employees in a company was additionally assessed with high accuracy by observers who were given a one-minute clip of the employees engaging in a puzzle task.Hall, J. A., & Friedman, G. B. (1999). Status, gender and nonverbal behavior: A study of structured interactions between employees of a company. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1082-1091.
Attitudes Perhaps because of the significant social consequences of appearing prejudiced towards racial minorities,Blanchard, F. A., Lilly, T., & Vaghn, L. A. (1991). Condemning and condoning racism: A social context approach to interracial settings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 993-997. objective observers are extremely accurate in assessing racial bias during silenced thin-slice clips. In one study, naïve judges were given twenty-second clips of a white subject interacting with either a white or black confederate, and observers were able to accurately assess racial bias as well as negative effect even when the clip did not include information about the race of the confederate that the subject was interacting with.Richeson, J. A., & Shelton, J. N. (2005). Thin slices of racial bias. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29, 75-86. In another example of attitudes being quickly perceived in thin-slice videos, subjects were given ten-second silent clips of teachers giving a lecture to a classroom. After they watched the clip, observers stated how likely it is that the teacher would treat high-achieving and low-achieving students equally, and their ratings were positively correlated with the teacher's actual biases.Babad, E. (2005). Guessing teachers differential treatment of high- and low-achievers from thin slices of their lecturing behavior. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29, 125-134. Raters who were given thin-slice silent clips of judges in court cases were also above-chance in guessing whether the judge personally believed the defendant was innocent or guilty based on watching said judge give the jury their final instructions at the end of the trial. Judges who believed the defendant would be found guilty were seen as less warm, competent, and wise in the clip while additionally appearing more anxious.Blanck, P. D., Rosenthal, R., & Cordell, L. D. H. (1985). The appearance of justice: Judges verbal and nonverbal behaviour in criminal jury trials. Stanford Law Review, 38, 89-164.
Mental health Perceivers are highly reliable in correctly assessing mental health as well. For example, one meta-analysis found that perceivers were able to accurately and reliably estimate how much state- and trait-anxiety individuals possessed when provided clips of the individuals' silent behavior alone.Harrigan, J.A., Wilson, K., & Rosenthal, R. (2004). Detecting state and trait anxiety from auditory and visual cues: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 56-66. In another study that presented observers with silenced admissions interviews at a psychiatric hospital, both experts and non-experts in mental health were correct in assessing whether patients did or did not suffer with depression 88% of the time on average.Waxer, P. H. (1974). Nonverbal cues for depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83, 319-322. In one set of studies researchers found that, while most personality disorders are not guessed accurately by observers in thin-slice exposures, observers were highly accurate in assessing avoidant, histrionic, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders.Friedman, J. N. W., Oltmanns, T. F., Gleason, M. E. J., & Turkheimer, E. (2004). Mixed impressions: Reactions of strangers to people with pathological personality traits. Journal of Personality, 40, 395-410.
Relationships and sexuality Despite the highly personal nature of sexuality, observers are able to reliably estimate the sexuality of strangers with relative ease. A series of studies in 1999 provided observers with silent clips that were either ten-seconds or one-second long in which heterosexual and homosexual subjects discussed their academic and extracurricular activities. Observers were well-above chance in correctly identifying which participants were heterosexual or homosexual and remained correct far above chance even when the videos were digitally degraded so that only the outlines of the individuals were presented.Ambady, N., Hallahan, M., & Conner, B. (1999). Accuracy of judgments of sexual orientation from thin slices of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 947-961. Another study examined perceptions of gait and their relationship to sexuality assessment. The researchers found that men who swayed their hips but did not swagger their shoulders while walking were significantly more likely to be categorized as homosexual by observers, and that over-all the observers who relied upon this information during thin-slice videos were more accurate than their peers in correctly guessing the sexuality of a recorded male walking.Johnson, K. L., Gill, S., Reichman, V., & Tassinary, L. G. (2007). Swagger, sway, and sexuality: Judging sexual orientation from body motion and morphology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 321-334.
Observers are additionally accurate at assessing the socio-sexuality of individuals in silent thin-slice clips. In one study, observers were given silent thin-slice videos of people engaging in a first-date interview. These observers correctly identified to what degree said interviewees were socio-sexual, even when controlling for the physical attractiveness of the person being interviewed.Simpson, J. A., & Gangestad, S. W. (1991). Individual differences in sociosexuality: Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 870-883. Another set of studies found that observers were able to reliably judge how likely it was for a man to sexually harass women he encountered by showing the observers a short, silent clip that lasted less than three minutes of him being interviewed by an attractive woman.Craig, T. Y., Kelly, J. R., & Driscoll, D. (2001). Participant perceptions of potential employers. Sex Roles, 44, 389-400.