What Are My Friends Really Like? How We Change Our Perceptions of Familiar Others’ Traits and Actions

In everyday life, our perceptions of others' traits are influenced by a combination of their actions and our relationship with them. We enrolled 142 participants in a virtual escape room to examine (a) whether an unfamiliar task changed perceptions of friends' traits, (b) which types of prior relationships influenced trait perceptions, and (c) the relative importance of perceptions of actions in assessing traits. Higher pregame similarity ratings led to increases in perceptions of competence, while higher pregame liking ratings led to increases in perceptions of sociability. In addition, objective performance mattered for competence ratings, whereas subjective perceptions of performance mattered for sociability ratings. Our findings demonstrate the importance of real-world relationships not only for how we change our beliefs about others' traits but also for perceptions of the very actions we use as evidence for those beliefs.