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REVIEW PAPER
The Vertical Dimension of Social Relations and AccurateInterpersonal Perception: A Meta-Analysis
Judith A. Hall • Marianne Schmid Mast • Ioana-Maria Latu
Published online: 24 October 2014� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract There is little consensus regarding how verticality (social power, dominance,
and status) is related to accurate interpersonal perception. The relation could be either
positive or negative, and there could be many causal processes at play. The present article
discusses the theoretical possibilities and presents a meta-analysis of this question. In
studies using a standard test of interpersonal accuracy, higher socioeconomic status (SES)
predicted higher accuracy defined as accurate inference about the meanings of cues; also,
higher experimentally manipulated vertical position predicted higher accuracy defined as
accurate recall of others’ words. In addition, although personality dominance did not
predict accurate inference overall, the type of personality dominance did, such that
empathic/responsible dominance had a positive relation and egoistic/aggressive dominance
had a negative relation to accuracy. In studies involving live interaction, higher experi-
mentally manipulated vertical position produced lower accuracy defined as accurate
inference about cues; however, methodological problems place this result in doubt.
Keywords Verticality � Power � Dominance � SES � Accuracy of interpersonal
perception � Emotion recognition � Recall
Introduction
For decades, researchers and theorists have asked whether social power, status, and
dominance—here called the ‘‘vertical dimension’’ to capture a variety of specific
J. A. Hall (&)Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USAe-mail: [email protected]
M. Schmid MastDepartment of Organizational Behavior, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerlande-mail: [email protected]
I.-M. LatuDepartment of Psychology, Rutgers University, Camden, USAe-mail: [email protected]
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J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163DOI 10.1007/s10919-014-0205-1
definitions (Hall et al. 2005)—are correlated with accuracy in perceiving other people. Yet,
a consensus has not been reached either empirically or theoretically.
Interpersonal accuracy has many documented correlates. For example, interpersonally
accurate salespeople are more successful (Byron et al. 2007), interpersonally accurate
doctors have more satisfied patients and patients who are more likely to keep their
appointments (DiMatteo et al. 1979, 1986), and interpersonally accurate negotiators pro-
duce more value in their negotiations (Elfenbein et al. 2007). Accurate interpersonal
perception correlates with relationship quality, psychological adjustment, and favorable
workplace outcomes (Hall et al. 2009a).
The intersection of the vertical dimension and interpersonal accuracy is the topic of the
present review. We focus on the question of how a perceiver’s own vertical position, defined
in multiple ways, is correlated with that person’s accuracy in forming judgments of other
people and in recalling their behavior or attributes. Understanding whether people high or
low in verticality are more or less accurate in perceiving others—and if so, how and why—
could have great practical significance. If it were shown, for example, that people become
less and less accurate in judging the people around them as they move up the ranks in an
organization, this could have important consequences. Or, if people lower in socioeconomic
status (SES) are less accurate perceivers of other people, this could have consequences in
terms of their chances for upward mobility. Furthermore, there are many possible causal
paths that need to be considered and tested, as well as many possible moderators.
Despite the importance of these questions, research has thus far produced inconsistent
results. These may stem from different ways of understanding verticality and the wide
variety of methodologies used. In the present article, the relation of the vertical dimension
to interpersonal accuracy is addressed in terms of how verticality is operationally defined
and how accuracy is measured. The only previous meta-analysis on this topic was not
comprehensive and is no longer up to date (Hall et al. 1997).
As prologue to the meta-analysis, we review basic definitions and theoretical questions.
This conceptual discussion extends well beyond what the meta-analysis can demonstrate,
yet it is important for establishing a theoretical framework within which the empirical
literature can be considered.
The Multifaceted Nature of the Verticality Construct
Common operational definitions of verticality include hierarchical role, personality dom-
inance, SES, and expertise (Guinote and Vescio 2010; Hall et al. 2005). It can be defined as
having or striving for control over others or having access to more resources explicitly or
by implication (Keltner et al. 2003). It also encompasses structural power, status, and
dominance. Structural power describes hierarchical differences in functions or positions
(Ellyson and Dovidio 1985). Status is considered to be real or implied power derived from
membership in a specific social group (Pratto et al. 1994; Sidanius et al. 2004) or the
respect awarded by group members to a specific individual. Dominance can reflect both an
enduring trait of personality (Ellyson and Dovidio 1985) indicating the extent to which a
person desires to control others (Hall et al. 2005) or a more transient behavior (Schmid
Mast 2010).
In the present literature, four definitions of verticality were investigated in enough
studies for a meaningful analysis: vertical positions already attained by participants at the
time their accuracy was assessed (such as real-life hierarchical rank), the dominance of
their personalities, their SES, and their verticality as experimentally manipulated in the
laboratory.
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Inferential Versus Recall Accuracy
There are two main ways of defining accuracy of interpersonal perception and both are
included in the present analyses. The first and most common is making accurate inferences
about other people’s states (such as emotions), traits, attitudes, or personal attributes as
conveyed through their nonverbal cues or their combined nonverbal and verbal cues. The
second is accurately noticing and/or recalling others’ behavior (including their words) or
their attributes, such as appearance (Bernieri 2001). This kind of accuracy holds a minor
place in the overall field of interpersonal accuracy measurement (Hall et al. 2006a) but not
such a minor place in research on verticality and accuracy. Noticing and recalling infor-
mation about another person may be a precursor to accurate inference about that person’s
states or traits, but it is not synonymous with it. Accurate interpersonal recall may serve
important functions in daily life that are both instrumental (because getting tasks
accomplished may be facilitated if people remember what others have said and done) and
socioemotional (because remembering things about others may be a way to show regard
for them).
Theoretical Issues
The first question, of course, is whether there is any relation between verticality and
interpersonal accuracy. If there is a relation, many theoretical issues emerge, which we
discuss in this section.
Are People High in Verticality More Accurate than Those Who Are Low, or Is it
the Reverse?
Early on, Thomas et al. (1972) and Henley (1977) argued that subordinate status is
associated with more accurate interpersonal perception because being accurate has adap-
tive value in coping with a low vertical position. Interpersonal accuracy would be adaptive
for such people because their welfare may depend on discerning the intentions, moods,
desires, and attitudes of those with higher vertical position. People with low vertical
position may use the knowledge they acquire in this manner to predict the behavior of
higher others and thereby adjust their own behavior.1 Arguments for why low vertical
position might be associated with high accuracy have been made by Keltner et al. (2003),
Fiske (1993), LaFrance and Henley (1997), Kraus et al. (2012), and Magee and Smith
(2013), among others.
The opposite possibility, that high vertical position is associated with greater inter-
personal accuracy, has long been voiced by researchers in the leadership field (Riggio
2001; Walter et al. 2012). To the extent that leaders are selected for their skills and
deselected if they fail to demonstrate them, the general picture should be one in which
people with high positions in organizations are more accurate than those lower down. In
organizational psychology, increased interpersonal accuracy is considered one of the skills
required for good leadership (Mumford et al. 2007). As Lord and Hall put it, ‘‘a critical
quality in leaders may be their sensitivity to the emotions of others’’ (2005, p. 606).
Furthermore, empirical studies repeatedly show positive correlations between interpersonal
1 Henley (1977) tied this hypothesis to the established finding that women (considered to be low power)score higher on most interpersonal accuracy tests than men (considered to be high power) [for summaries ofthese gender differences see Hall (1984), or Hall and Gunnery (2013)].
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accuracy and measures of leadership quality. For instance, the ability to assess others’
emotions correctly was a significant predictor of transformational leadership behavior, a
leadership style that is associated with positive outcomes (Rubin et al. 2005). Similarly,
female managers who were better at recognizing facial emotions had more satisfied sub-
ordinates (Byron 2007); supervisors who had more such skill received higher employee
ratings of effectiveness (Kerr et al. 2006); and executives who had more such skill received
higher ratings on building effective working relationships from their superiors (Rosete and
Ciarrochi 2005). Also, in a laboratory setting, participants in a leader role who were better
at correctly assessing others’ thoughts and feelings had more satisfied subordinates
(Schmid Mast et al. 2012). With this kind of evidence connecting high interpersonal
accuracy to good leadership, it is unlikely that the prevailing trend would be for people
lower in the hierarchy to be more interpersonally accurate than those higher up, although
specific circumstances could probably be found in which this would be the case.
There are good reasons why people high in verticality might need to have superior
interpersonal accuracy (Hall and Halberstadt 1997; Hall et al. 1997; Schmid Mast et al.
2009). Often, people with power and responsibility—military officers, teachers, parents,
religious leaders, bosses, people who are influential in their social group—have a strong
need to be astute judges of the states and traits of the people around them, in order to
advance or maintain their position and to further the collective goals of the group. Inter-
personal accuracy in people with higher verticality may help them to achieve important
goals such as deciding whom to trust and promote, averting confusion and demoralization,
and earning the respect and support of others. Other authors who argue that people with
higher vertical position could be more accurate than lower people include Overbeck and
Park (2001, 2006) as well as some who suggest this same relation from the perspective of
the lower person, who may suffer cognitive and motivational deficits when judging others
(Lord and Saenz 1985).
Is it a Causal Relation at All?
If verticality and accuracy are correlated with each other, either positively or negatively,
they may or may not be causally related. A non-causal relation is a real possibility in
studies without experimental assignment to vertical roles or mindsets. To illustrate
hypothetically, if managers in a supermarket are more accurate than those who stock the
shelves, the relation could be due to general intelligence or extraversion insofar as such
qualities might underlie both the attainment of high position and the development of skill
in interpersonal perception (Hall et al. 2009a; Murphy and Hall 2011).
What Causes What?
If there is indeed a causal connection between verticality and accuracy, either positive or
negative, which way does the causal arrow point? Verticality could influence accuracy, or
accuracy could influence verticality. In social psychology, most authors talk of verticality
as a determinant of accuracy. However, in management and business it is often assumed
that good communication skills contribute to the attainment and maintenance of high
position. Referring to accuracy in perceiving the structure of informal networks within an
organization, Casciaro said, ‘‘Perceiver accuracy … is an important source of power.
Individuals who perceive accurately the structure of advice relations in their work envi-
ronment are more capable of getting what they want’’ (1998, p. 332). Scherer and Scherer
worked from the stated assumption that ‘‘greater emotion recognition skills further
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advancement on the career ladder’’ (2011, p. 323). Because in many domains, not just
management and business, power is conferred by other people, good communication skills
could make the difference in promotions, recommendations, votes, reputation, and all the
other ways in which other people determine a person’s social position. Conversely,
interpersonal obtuseness could cause one to stagnate in one’s rank or social standing, or
even to slip, lowering the person’s position and possibly even impacting a more distal
variable such as SES.
Johnson and Bechler (1998) performed a study of ‘‘listening skills’’ as a predictor of
emergent leadership in initially leaderless groups. This study was not included in the meta-
analysis because the operational definition of listening skills did not fit the inclusion
criteria (see ‘‘Method’’). However, the study did measure group members’ and neutral
observers’ ratings of interest and attention to others in the group, which is conceptually
akin to accuracy of interpersonal perception. Johnson and Bechler (1998) found that lis-
tening skills positively and strongly predicted emergent leadership as measured by group
members and neutral observers. Thus, this study supports the argument that interpersonal
accuracy can lead to increases in social position.
What Is the Locus of the Effect?
Here, the question is whose accuracy is influenced by his/her vertical position, the higher
person’s, the lower person’s, or both. If high individuals are more accurate than low
individuals, this might come about in different ways. High verticality might enhance one’s
accuracy while low verticality might either hamper or have no impact on one’s accuracy.
Likewise, high verticality might not affect one’s accuracy while low verticality reduces
one’s accuracy. Analogous possibilities would pertain if high individuals are less accurate
than low individuals. Unfortunately most studies do not allow an evaluation of this
question.
Methodologies for Studying Verticality and Their Implications
As stated earlier, the verticality construct has been operationalized in four main ways in
this literature: (1) pre-existing vertical position (e.g., rank in an organization), (2) per-
sonality dominance (e.g., on a self-report scale), (3) SES (e.g., education, income, or
occupational status), and (4) experimentally manipulated power (e.g., roles assigned in a
laboratory experiment).2 Within these, there are variations, for example experimental
manipulations include both creating temporary vertical roles and priming the verticality
2 A small number of studies did not fit these categories and were not included in the meta-analyticsummaries. Their verticality definitions were self-rating of dominance in one’s job, observer ratings ofdominance during an interaction, influence that emerged in a group interaction according to peer or observerreports (emergent leadership), and self-reported power within one’s family. Another study was not includedbecause though the power definition fitted our categories (personality dominance), it was the only per-sonality study using recall as the accuracy measure. The effects for these left-out studies were small andinconsistent, with only two being significant but both showing that higher verticality was associated withgreater interpersonal accuracy. In one, female medical students who scored higher on judging affective cueswere rated by observers as more dominant when interacting with a standardized patient (Hall et al. 2009c).In the other, undergraduate business students who scored higher on judging affective cues were more likelyto emerge as leaders within task groups to which they were assigned (Walter et al. 2012). Finally, althoughwe initially conceptualized ‘‘status’’ as a broader topic than just SES, no studies using a broader definition(such as others’ respect) emerged in the literature search.
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concept. The four main categories of verticality might involve different causal
mechanisms.
Experimental manipulations have several features that may impact results. A manipu-
lation of vertical position may invoke in participants mainly stereotypes of how higher and
lower power people behave, and therefore their behavior may not correspond to the
behavior of people who ‘‘really’’ have an asymmetric relation to one another. Moreover,
manipulations may be weak because of ethical constraints or the lack of sufficient time to
develop convincing roles for participants. Also, such manipulations are typically imposed
on undergraduates who know they actually have equivalent power or status, have little at
stake, and have limited actual experience in high positions. Often in such experiments,
participants know that their roles are randomly assigned, which would likely diminish their
impact.
Another important point is that experimental manipulations of verticality allow as
potentially causal factors only the cognitive, motivational, or emotional states that can be
influenced by the experimental manipulation. This is important to keep in mind because, as
we explore further in the Discussion, it is not clear what kinds of systematic influence such
states have on accurate interpersonal perception. And even if such states do mediate a
verticality-accuracy process in experiments, those processes may be very different from the
processes that underlie a verticality-accuracy correlation in a more real-world situation.
Also, even among experimental manipulations, different manipulations may trigger
different mediating mechanisms. For example, if priming the verticality concept (for
example, by being asked to remember a situation in which one felt powerful or in charge of
others) influences accuracy, it is likely through a cognitive (maybe also more automatic)
route, whereas if being assigned to a higher or lower vertical role influences accuracy, the
mediating mechanism may be more emotional or motivational (maybe also more delib-
erate). Therefore, experimental manipulations produce insights only into very proximal
influences on accuracy and may rest on heterogeneous causal processes.
Other definitions of verticality may also trigger different causal processes in relation to
accuracy. Personality dominance may tell more about the desire for interpersonal control,
or one’s self-concept, than about attained or actual verticality. And, because individual
differences are precisely what are ruled out of causal influence when experimental
manipulations are used, whatever processes underlie correlations between personality
dominance and accuracy may be very different from the processes involved in experi-
mental settings. Pre-existing vertical position is similar to personality dominance in being a
person-level variable, yet different in that the person’s vertical position actually exists
(such as between people who differ in organizational rank) as opposed to possibly being
just yearned for or claimed. SES, too, is an individual difference that may have a very
different array of causal paths to (or from) accuracy.
If any of the non-experimental definitions of verticality listed above has a causal impact
on accuracy, that impact could also be based on either distal or proximal factors. Distal
factors would include prior experience and learning, such that people high or low on that
definition (e.g., personality dominance, pre-existing verticality, SES) may perform well or
poorly on the accuracy tasks because of skills they attained or failed to attain as a result of
their vertical position. Proximal factors, in contrast, would be responsible for a verticality-
accuracy relation if the setting triggers different cognitive, motivational, or emotional
states in people who are high versus low in verticality and it is these states that determine
accuracy. As a hypothetical example of this, a person high or low in SES may enter the
research setting with accuracy skills that are no better or worse than anyone else’s, but if
SES is made salient this could influence performance on an accuracy task through
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psychological processes in the moment (e.g., motivation to accurately assess the other
person, distraction, or changes in momentary self-confidence or anxiety).
In sum, verticality is so diverse a construct that one should probably not posit a common
causal path or common mediators.
Accuracy Paradigms
The testing paradigm and the in vivo or person-to-person paradigm are analyzed sepa-
rately in the present meta-analysis. In the testing paradigm, the researcher administers an
accuracy test consisting of a standard set of stimuli (such as video clips of target
persons’ behavior) for which there is an accepted criterion for scoring accuracy. For
example, the test-taker may be asked to judge emotions from photographs of facial
expressions (an inference study) or to remember what a person in a video did or said (a
recall study).
The in vivo paradigm involves measuring accuracy between people who have engaged
in live interaction during or after which one or both people make judgments about the
other. For example, a person low in SES might interact with a person high in SES and each
may judge the other’s emotions. In such studies, the criterion is typically self-ratings made
by the partner-target, such as how they were feeling during the interaction. In the in vivo
paradigm, accuracy is typically defined as accurate inferences, but recall of the partner-
target’s words or other details can also be measured in the in vivo paradigm. Mostly, the
accuracy assessment is made during or immediately following the interaction, but some-
times it is made later, based on memory or inference about the other person based on
interactions that occurred at an earlier point in time.
There is no question that the in vivo paradigm captures better than does the testing
paradigm how interpersonal perception occurs in daily life: one person judges another
based on their interaction. Does she like me? Is she embarrassed? How much did she
smile? What did he say? This kind of interpersonal accuracy is not only real-life, but it is
personally relevant and motivating in ways that watching recorded stimuli is not. But
alongside these advantages, there are also problems with the in vivo method. One is simply
practical; it is a more labor-intensive method because it involves gathering data from two
people, not just one; and the criteria for scoring accuracy of judgment must be gathered
individually for each partner-target (Letzring 2008). In the testing paradigm, in contrast,
group administration is possible and the criteria need to be gathered only once, during test
development. Likely for these reasons, fewer studies on verticality and accuracy have used
the in vivo method compared to the testing method.
But there is a second challenge in doing in vivo studies, one with important impli-
cations for understanding results of research. It is self-evident that accurate perception of
another person is determined in part by how clear and interpretable the target person’s
cues are. If your partner in an interaction never shows his/her feelings (attitudes,
opinions, etc.), you cannot judge them accurately. Conversely, you are likely to be quite
accurate if the partner is an open book. Because of this, inferential accuracy in a dyadic
interaction is confounded between the perceiver’s perceptivity and the partner-target’s
expressive clarity, as has long been acknowledged (Alkire et al. 1968; Noller 1980;
Snodgrass et al. 1998).
When dyad partners differ in no systematic ways this confounding is a source of random
error. However, when dyad partners differ in vertical position, the confounding becomes a
potential source of systematic error that could dramatically influence conclusions about
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whether the higher or lower vertical person is the more accurate perceiver. This is because
research has found systematic differences in the expressivity of people higher and lower in
verticality. People lower in situationally defined verticality or lower in personality domi-
nance have been found to be less variable in their behavior, less open about their views,
less expressive, less good at conveying emotions through nonverbal cues, and generally
more behaviorally inhibited [see reviews in Hall et al. (2006c) and in Russell and Fiske
(2010)]. Or, in one study, the opposite was found: the higher vertical person in the dyad
was less clear as a communicator than the lower power person (Alkire et al. 1968). Because
the partner’s expression may thus vary with his/her own vertical position, strong or weak
judgment accuracy in the perceiving member of the dyad should not be attributed—or at
least not without empirical justification—to the perceiving member’s vertical position.
Instead, accuracy could be due to the partner’s providing systematically good or poor
information as the basis for judgment (Funder 1995).
Separating the expressive clarity of the partner-target from the perceptivity of the
perceiver is possible and is typically done by showing the videotape of the partner-targets
to new, naıve viewers who make the same accuracy judgments that the original perceivers
did. Their accuracy is then considered the operational definition of the expressive clarity of
the partner-targets. By comparing the new viewers’ accuracy with the original perceivers’
accuracy (or, alternatively, by controlling for the new viewers’ accuracy while correlating
the original perceivers’ accuracy with other variables, such as power), one can reach valid
conclusions about perceiver accuracy [see Alkire et al. (1968), Hall et al. (2006c), and
Noller (1980), for demonstrations of this procedure]. In a given study, the expressive
clarity of partner-targets could account for all, some, or none of the variance in the original
perceivers’ accuracy.
Overview of Meta-Analysis
Different segments of the literature are analyzed separately due to important methodo-
logical differences. These include the way interpersonal accuracy was measured and how
the verticality construct was defined. Potential moderators were also examined.
Method
Literature Search
In addition to searching bibliographies and our own reprint files, we conducted searches on
PsycINFO that crossed power-related terms with accuracy-related terms. The power-
related terms included power, dominance, assertive, status, social class, SES, hierar*,
leader*, subordinat*, and boss. The accuracy-related terms included accuracy, emotion
recognition, decoding, nonverbal skill, nonverbal sensitivity, Profile of Nonverbal Sensi-
tivity, PONS, DANVA, Interpersonal Perception Task, personality judgment, social per-
ception, lie detection, role taking, and perspective taking. Also, in Sociological Abstracts
the terms power and dominance were crossed with accuracy. Finally, individual emails
were sent to selected researchers whom we thought might have published or unpublished
results to donate, and we broadcast an appeal on the listserv of the Society for Personality
and Social Psychology.
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Inclusion Criteria
Study and Source Characteristics
The following criteria were used to determine inclusion of a study in the meta-analysis.
Participant criteria were: (1) age 13 and older,3 (2) sample size at least 10, and (3) no
special populations (clinically diagnosed, learning disabled, etc.). The sources could be: (1)
unpublished data solicited through the Society for Personality and Social Psychology
listserv and through personal contacts, as well as our own unpublished studies, (2) dis-
sertations, obtained from ProQuest, (3) supplemental unpublished results from published
articles, provided on request by the articles’ authors (these were categorized as published in
the database), and (4) English-language published articles or books.
Accuracy had to be scored using an independent criterion against which perceivers’
judgments were compared. Studies in which perceivers drew inferences about the mean-
ings of behavior are called inference studies, and studies in which perceivers had to
remember something about the target(s) are called recall studies.
Operational Definitions of Verticality
The definitions could include: (1) pre-existing vertical position (e.g., rank in a hierarchy),
(2) personality dominance, (3) SES (e.g., own or parents’ education, score on a social class
index), and (4) experimental manipulations (e.g., assigned higher and lower vertical roles,
power concept priming).
Excluded as operational definitions of power were: (1) gender, race, and age per se, (2)
gender-role variables (e.g., division of labor in marriage, femininity and masculinity,
feminist values), (3) peer popularity (sociometric status),4 (4) trait locus of control, because
it is not an indicator of social power even though it does connote a personal sense of
agency [see Hall et al. (2009c), for a meta-analysis showing that internal locus of control is
a positive correlate of interpersonal accuracy], (5) power-related social attitudes such as
ethnic prejudice, out-group derogation, or social dominance orientation, (6) experimental
manipulations that were not about vertical positions per se, but rather were manipulations
intended to mimic cognitive/emotional processes hypothesized to be associated with
vertical positions (e.g., global–local processing, perspective taking, motivation to be
accurate, compassion, emotional state, ingratiation, cognitive load).
Accuracy Task
Because we defined accuracy in terms of perceiving other people’s cues, important
inclusion criteria were that perceivers had to see and/or hear people, live or recorded, who
could be either real participants, confederates, or avatars; perceivers could also read
3 A priori, we did not include studies of young children because it was not clear how directly applicable theverticality construct is to that age group. In fact, it was a moot point because there were few if any suchstudies.4 Although it is true that high sociometric status (i.e., popularity, peer regard) has implications for powerand social influence in the peer group, the two are not synonymous. Popularity furthermore merges withother constructs that become increasingly tangential to the verticality construct, such as physical attrac-tiveness, personality traits (e.g., extraversion), and general social competence. Previous research has foundthat accurate interpersonal perception is positively correlated with popularity and general social competence(Hall et al. 2009c).
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statements believed to be from real people, and they could respond about target persons
who were not immediately present but whom they already knew (such as coworkers).
However, studies in which perceivers’ judgments were about people abstractly (e.g.,
members of a social or professional group who were not known to the participants as
individuals) were not included.
Definition of a Study
The definition of a ‘‘study’’ was an independent sample of participants. If effect sizes were
available for subgroups within the total sample (e.g., men vs. women, or several irrelevant,
that is, ostensibly not power related, experimental conditions), then these subgroups were
entered as separate studies.
Coding of Study Characteristics
Study attributes were coded first by one person (JAH) after which a second person (IML)
checked every code. Discrepancies, which were few, were resolved by discussion. The
study attribute variables are shown in the Appendix. All were examined as possible
moderator variables when there were enough studies to merit doing so and when it made
sense given the distribution of moderator values. In these analyses, some of the categories
shown in the Appendix were dropped or merged with other categories due to small
numbers of studies. See Table 1 for frequencies.
Coding of Effect Sizes and Analysis
Coding of Effect Sizes
The relation of verticality to accuracy was expressed as the Pearson correlation (r), signed
such that positive correlations meant that higher vertical people were more accurate than
lower vertical people, and negative correlations meant the reverse. One person (JAH)
extracted all of the effect sizes and a second person (MSM) checked every effect size
against the original studies. Discrepancies, which were few, were resolved by discussion.
All effect sizes (r) representing the relation of verticality to accuracy were transformed to
Fisher’s z before analysis, and converted back to the r metric for presentation.
When the Pearson correlation was not directly reported, it was calculated using standard
formulas for converting different test statistics to r (e.g., 1-df F ratios, t tests, means and
SDs). In a small minority of studies the verticality-accuracy correlation could not be
calculated. These studies were not included in the database. However, when it was nec-
essary to average several non-independent effects from the same study and some of these
had known effect sizes and others were unknown, the unknown ones were imputed to be
zero and then averaged with the known effect sizes.
Analysis Models
Random-effects and fixed-effects models were both employed and are indicated in
Tables 2 and 3. Random-effects models offer generalization to new studies testing the
same hypothesis but possibly having different study designs, whereas fixed-effects models
offer generalization only to the same study designs with new participants from the same
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Table 1 Study characteristics
Variable Testing paradigm (67 studies) In vivo paradigm (25 studies)
Published 48/67 (72 %) 21/25 (84 %)
Year (Md, range) 1998 (1954–2011) 2006 (1968–2012)
Female first author 34/67 (51 %) 18/25 (72 %)
Sample size (M, range) 231 (10–7,320) 107 (20–424)
Age in years (M, range) 24 (19–42) 26 (19–42)
Age category
13–17 5/67 (8 %) 0/25
18–22 33/67 (49 %) 19/25 (76 %)
23–27 2/67 (3 %) 1/25 (4 %)
28–32 2/67 (3 %) 0/25
33–37 1/67 (2 %) 0/25
Mix of age groups 24/67 (36 %) 5/25 (20 %)
Percent male (M, range) 48 (0–100) 39 (0–100)
Location
Laboratory 44/67 (66 %) 19/25 (76 %)
Field 23/67 (34 %) 6/25 (24 %)
Sample type
College/university 44/67 (66 %) 18/25 (72 %)
Employees 10/67 (15 %) 3/25 (12 %)
Community 10/67 (15 %) 3/25 (12 %)
Mix of types 3/67 (4 %) 1/25 (4 %)
Type of design/analysis
Experimental design 23/67 (34 %) 13/25 (52 %)
Known groups comparison 6/67 (9 %) 3/25 (12 %)
Correlational 38/67 (57 %) 9/25 (36 %)
Type of group comparison
Within-dyads 3/29 (10 %) 9/16 (56 %)
Between-groups 26/29 (90 %) 7/16 (44 %)
Accuracy test (if named)
PONS 22/55 (40 %) na
DANVA 8/55 (14 %) na
Other or combination 25/55 (44 %) na
Content of accuracy test
Affect or emotion 50/55 (91 %) 9/20 (45 %)
Thoughts/feelings of targets 4/55 (7 %) 4/20 (20 %)
Other 1/55 (2 %) 7/20 (35 %)
Content of recall
Words 11/12 (92 %) 0/5
Nonverbal behavior or appearance 0/12 5/5 (100 %)
Other 1/12 (8 %) 0/5
Percentages may not add to 100 % due to rounding. Some low-frequency categories were combined. PONSProfile of Nonverbal Sensitivity, DANVA Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy, na not applicable.Table includes the two positive outlier studies that were removed from all further analyses
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 141
123
population (Lipsey and Wilson 2001; Raudenbush 2009). Fixed-effects models gain sta-
tistical precision by incorporating information about sample sizes into the calculations but
not assuming between-studies variance (i.e., by treating variation among effect sizes as due
only to participant-level sampling error) and are typically more powerful, yielding stronger
effects in terms of significance tests. Fixed-effects results lack generality, however.
Because of the variety of methodologies used, it was clear that study-level variance
should be given weight as in the random-effects approach. Also, there was great heter-
ogeneity among the effect sizes (as discussed below), which argues against the fixed-
effects premise that the variance among studies represents only sampling variation from a
common population effect size. For these reasons, after calculating the basic results using
both random and fixed approaches for comparison purposes (Tables 2, 3), analysis of
moderator variables was conducted using a fully random-effects approach (Rosenthal
1995).
Most random-effects analyses were conducted using the IBM SPSS statistical package,
Version 20. Fixed-effects procedures were done using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis
software (Borenstein et al. 2005). These included mean correlations weighted by the
inverse of their variance (which amounts to weighting by sample size, or more exactly
N - 3), test of the mean effect against zero, fixed-effects confidence intervals, heteroge-
neity statistic (to test whether the distribution of effect sizes is more variable than one
would expect based on participant sampling variation alone), and publication bias analysis
(file-drawer analysis; Rosenthal 1979).
Organization of Analyses
Analyses were conducted according to the following subgroupings, based on information
captured in the coded variables listed above. The testing paradigm and the in vivo para-
digm were analyzed separately. Within each of those paradigms, five meta-analyses were
conducted: the first four were for pre-existing vertical position, personality dominance,
SES, and experimental manipulations of verticality in relation to accurate interpersonal
inference, and the fifth was for experimental manipulations of verticality in relation to
accurate interpersonal recall (this was the only definition of verticality we could use with
recall studies).
Results
Verticality and Accuracy in the Testing Paradigm
Study Characteristics
Thirty-four sources reported 67 independent studies totaling 15,505 participants. Table 1
(left-hand column) presents the descriptive data for the coded study characteristics. In
overview, the studies dated from 1954 to 2011 and most were published. Most of the coded
characteristics showed a reasonable distribution but some were notably skewed; nearly all
of the inference studies were about judging emotions, while nearly all of the recall studies
were about recalling targets’ words. Some studies presented results for more than one
verticality definition; these are separately entered into their respective definitions in
Table 2, explaining why the total of studies across the power definitions exceeds 67.
142 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
123
Table
2Testingparadigm:correlationsbetweenverticality
andinterpersonal
accuracy
Typeofstudy
kRandom-effectsresults
Fixed-effects
results
Md
MSD
Range
tvs.0
M95%
CI
ZHeterogeneity
Filedrawer
k
Pre-existingverticalposition—inference
10
.04
.04
.18
-.23to
.34
.67
-.01
-.04to
.02
-.43
20.17*
na
Personalitydominance—
inference
24
.00
.04
.21
-.29to
.51
.98
.00
-.03to
.03
.21
39.88*
na
SES—inference
21
.07
.07
.15
-.16to
.40
2.17*
.02
-.00to
.04
1.95?
39.68**
26
Experim
entalmanipulation—
inference
11
-.07
-.01
.27
-.38to
.27
-.16
-.03
-.09to
.04
-.77
57.70***
na
Experim
entalmanipulation—
recall
12
.20
.18
.33
-.40to
.61
1.97?
.19
.12to
.27
4.86***
49.59***
52
Positivevalues
ofrindicategreater
accuracy
byhigher
verticalparticipants,negativevalues
indicatethereverse.SESsocioeconomic
status,
nanotapplicable.Tests
of
significance
andthefile
drawer
analysisaretwo-tail
?p\
.10,*p\
.05,**p\
.01,***p\
.001
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 143
123
Table
3In
vivoparadigm:correlationsbetweenverticality
andinterpersonal
accuracy
Typeofstudy
kRandom-effectsresults
Fixed-effects
results
Md
MSD
Range
tvs.0
M95%
CI
ZHeterogeneity
Filedrawer
k
Pre-existingverticalposition—inference
4-.04
-.11
.27
-.46to
.14
-.80
-.04
-.13to
.06
-.81
5.80
na
Personalitydominance—
inference
5-.02
-.00
.17
-.23to
.19
-.03
-.05
-.12to
.03
-1.24
9.14?
na
SES—inference
2-.12
-.12
.11
-.20to
-.05
-1.67
-.14
-.28to
.01
-1.86?
.95
na
Experim
entalmanipulation—
inference
8-.07
-.15
.26
-.44to
.27
-1.61
-.14
-.24to
-.03
-2.53**
18.38**
5
Experim
entalmanipulation—
recall
5.01
-.04
.08
-.14to
.04
-.97
-.03
-.14to
.08
-.55
1.66
na
Positivevalues
ofrindicategreater
accuracy
byhigher
verticalparticipants,negativevalues
indicatethereverse.SESsocioeconomic
status,
nanotapplicable.Tests
of
significance
andthefile
drawer
analysisaretwo-tail
?p\
.10,**p\
.01
144 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
123
Pre-existing Vertical Position and Accurate Interpersonal Inference
Table 2, first row, shows results for pre-existing vertical position in relation to accurate
inference, based on both random- and fixed-effects models. For these 10 studies, which
were all based on rank in an organization, there was no evidence of an overall significant
effect although the effects were significantly heterogeneous. The two individual studies
with significant results found higher ranking individuals within organizations to be more
accurate than lower ranking individuals within the same organizations (Rosenthal et al.
1979; Schmid Mast and Darioly 2014). We calculated moderator analyses for all the
aforementioned moderator variables but none achieved statistical significance.
Personality Dominance and Accurate Interpersonal Inference
For personality dominance, there was one outlier effect size (r = .84, which was much
larger than the next largest effect size of .51; see Table 2, second row). In the outlier study,
in which participants were selected to have extreme high or low scores on the dominance
scale (Kombos and Fournet 1985), those with high dominant personalities had a highly
significant advantage in identifying emotions in facial expressions and gestures compared
to those with low dominant personalities. This outlier was removed from all analyses.
Table 2 shows that for the remaining 24 studies the overall effects were not significantly
different from zero, while significant heterogeneity was present.
Looking at the significance of individual studies, two found significant negative effects
[less dominant people scoring higher on facial and vocal cues of emotions in faces; both in
Moeller et al. (2011)] and one found a significant positive effect (high dominant women
scoring higher on judging facial expressions of emotion than low dominant women;
Schmid Mast et al. 2009, Study 3).
To investigate Schmid Mast et al.’s (2009) hypothesis that the type of personality
dominance is a moderator of the verticality-accuracy relation, we performed an analysis of
the distinction between egoistic/aggressive and empathic/responsible dominance. Three
analyses were done: (1) a matched t test for the four studies in which participants filled in
both types of dominance scales and separate correlations for them were reported, (2) an
independent samples t test for the 19 studies that used dominance scales that were of one or
the other type, and (3) single-sample t tests of each type of correlation against zero, based
on all of the available studies. To do the classification, two of the authors (JAH and IML)
independently inspected the content of the personality scales, independent of the results,
and classified the scales as egoistic/aggressive or empathic/responsible; in the one instance
of disagreement (which applied to three studies that all used the same scale), the remaining
author (MSM) rendered an independent judgment to break the tie.5 Items fitting the ego-
istic/aggressive description used terms such as aggressive, domineering, pushy, getting
one’s way, and seeking power, while items fitting the empathic/responsible description
were more about leadership, willingness to be in the spotlight, and problem solving. One
study, which used only a single item (assertive) was not classified in either category.
The matched t test mean correlations for empathic/responsible dominance and egoistic/
aggressive dominance when both were measured in the same study were .06 and -.13,
respectively, and their difference was marginally significant, t(3) = 2.84, p\ .07. The
independent-samples t test, which did not include those four studies, showed corresponding
5 When the three studies in question were classified as being of the other type of dominance, and the resultsrecalculated, little changed.
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 145
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similar means of .18 and -.07 and their difference was significant, t(17) = 3.42, p\ .01.
Finally, for empathic/responsible dominance, the overall mean correlation of .15 was
significantly above zero, t(14) = 2.97, p = .01. In contrast, for egoistic/aggressive dom-
inance the mean correlation of -.09 was marginally more negative than zero, t(11) =
-1.87, p\ .09. Thus it can be concluded that empathic/responsible dominance was more
positively correlated with accurate interpersonal inference than egoistic/aggressive domi-
nance was. There was no evidence of other moderator effects.
SES and Accurate Interpersonal Inference
Table 2 (third row) shows that the overall effect for the 21 studies relating SES to accurate
interpersonal inference was significantly positive in both the random-effects and fixed-
effects analyses, meaning that higher SES people were more accurate than lower SES
people, and again the effects were significantly heterogeneous. The file-drawer analysis
revealed that the fixed-effects effect would be rendered non-significant by the addition of
26 results with an average effect size of r = .00.
Looking at individual studies that attained statistical significance, one had a significant
negative effect among employees in an organization who were tested on accuracy of
judging facial emotions (Kraus et al. 2010, Study 1), whereas four had significant positive
effects—two that tested teenagers judging vocal emotions or face, body, and vocal cues of
affect (Pfaff 1954; Rosenthal et al. 1979), one that tested college students judging face,
body, and vocal cues of affect (Stokes 1983), and one that tested college students and
community people on judging facial emotions (Alvarez and Fuentes 1994). Again, we
tested whether any of the moderators affected the results and there was no evidence of
moderator effects.
Experimental Manipulation of Verticality and Accurate Interpersonal Inference
Table 2 (fourth row) shows that there was no evidence of an overall verticality effect for
the 11 studies that employed an experimental manipulation in relation to accurate infer-
ence. The average effect sizes were indistinguishable whether based on the five studies of
assigned vertical roles or the six studies that used a verticality priming induction (-.01 and
-.02, respectively). Again, the heterogeneity among effect sizes was significant and other
moderator analyses were uninformative.
Four studies had significant negative effects: two for college students tested on accuracy
of judging facial or vocal emotions after a priming induction consisting of writing about a
powerful or neutral experience in their past (Galinsky et al. 2006) or a powerful or non-
powerful experience in their past (Paulmann 2011); one for college students tested on
accuracy of judging emotions expressed in the eyes after imagining themselves to have
high or low social class (Kraus et al. 2010, Study 3; this study was included in this analysis
rather than in the one for SES because SES was imagined, not actual); and one for college
students who were tested on accuracy of judging facial emotions after being assigned to
vertical roles in the laboratory (Bachmann and Schmid Mast 2010). Three studies had
significant positive effects: one for college students who were tested for accuracy of
judging targets’ thoughts and feelings after being assigned to vertical roles in the labo-
ratory (Schmid Mast et al. 2009, Study 1); one for college students who were tested on this
same kind of accuracy after being primed with verticality-related versus control word
completions (Schmid Mast et al. 2009, Study 2); and one for college students who were
146 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
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tested on accuracy of judging facial emotions after writing about a powerful, neutral, or
powerless experience in their past (Schmid Mast et al. 2009, Study 3).
Experimental Manipulation of Verticality and Interpersonal Recall
The final line of Table 2 gives results for the 12 studies using experimental manipulations
in relation to recall accuracy. Both the random and fixed analyses showed evidence of a
significant effect such that people higher in verticality remembered more about target
persons than those lower in verticality. According to the file drawer analysis, the addition
of 52 studies with effect sizes averaging r = .00 would be required to make the combined
Z non-significant. Again, the heterogeneity among effect sizes was significant.
Looking at individual studies that were significant, one study found a significant neg-
ative effect, in which college students had to remember who it was who made a sexist
remark after being assigned to vertical roles in the laboratory (Barreto et al. 2010), while
four studies found a significant positive effect, all of which asked college students to
remember target persons’ words after being assigned to vertical roles in the laboratory
(Overbeck and Park 2001, Studies 1–3; Saenz and Lord 1989). The random-effects
(unweighted) effect size for just the 10 studies requiring participants to recall targets’
words (written or spoken) was r = .25, indicating that for recall studies this is the method
most likely to show a positive verticality effect. Other moderators were again
uninformative.
Overall Effects
Additional analyses were conducted that combined across some of the aforementioned
subgroupings. Because a few of the inference studies had more than one definition of
verticality, these effects were averaged within studies to maintain independence of
observations. Across all of the inference studies, again leaving out the outlier, the overall
unweighted mean r was .04 (SD = .20), which was not significantly different from zero,
t(53) = 1.54. A t test comparing these inference studies to the recall studies (M r = .18,
see Table 2) was significant, t(64) = 1.96, p = .05. Including the recall studies along with
the inference studies, the grand mean r for all independent studies in the testing paradigm
was .07 (SD = .23), a mean that was greater than zero, t(65) = 2.38, p\ .05, though
small in magnitude.
Within-Study Moderators
Individual studies within the testing paradigm were inspected to see what kinds of mod-
erators might have been identified by the authors of individual studies. Gender of partic-
ipant and/or target was examined as a within-study moderator (as shown by an interaction
of gender and verticality) by the original authors in 14 studies. All of these studies reported
that gender was not a moderator of the verticality effect, consistent with our between-
studies comparisons based on the percentage of male participants in the sample.
A few other within-studies moderators were reported, but these were neither consistent
nor theoretically interesting except for the following: In four studies of recall as a function
of experimentally assigned vertical roles, the tendency for the higher person to be more
accurate was significantly stronger when the information to be recalled was task relevant
(as opposed to task irrelevant; Cook 2002; Overbeck and Park 2001).
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 147
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Verticality and Accuracy in the In Vivo Paradigm
Study Characteristics
Table 1 (right-hand column) presents the basic descriptive data for study characteristics.
The in vivo studies included a total of 2,674 participants and spanned the years 1968–2012.
Compared to the standardized testing studies, they were much more likely to be conducted
in laboratories with college students and the range of content being judged was somewhat
broader than in the standardized testing studies. Also, all of the in vivo recall studies
involved recall of behavior or nonverbal cues, not the target’s words.
Verticality Effects
Table 3 presents the results for the in vivo paradigm. Altogether there were fewer studies
(k = 25) than in the testing paradigm (k = 67), and this hampered the analyses of the
separate verticality definitions. There was one positive outlier effect (r = .65, which was
far larger than any other in vivo result; see Table 3). In that study, sorority members were
much more accurate than pledges to the same sorority in a referential communication task;
this study was removed from all analyses (Alkire et al. 1968). Overall, the mean
unweighted effect size was negative, meaning that people lower in verticality were more
accurate than people higher in verticality (M r = -.08, SD = .20), with the mean being
significantly different from zero, t(23) = -2.09, p\ .05. As the table shows, the most
statistical significance occurred for studies of experimentally manipulated verticality in
relation to inference.
Before taking the evidence in Table 3 at face value, however, one must consider the
expressive clarity confound mentioned earlier. The Table 3 results do not take this into
account. We begin discussion of this issue by observing that there is likely no such
confound in the case of recall accuracy because what is recalled is factual information, not
cues that can be ‘‘sent’’ by a partner with varying degrees of expressive clarity. Therefore,
the communication clarity of the targets should not be an issue in those studies. Table 3
(bottom row) shows that there was no verticality-accuracy relation when the task was to
recall things about the targets.
In contrast, for all of the inference studies there is the possibility that the accuracy of the
perceivers was determined to an unknown extent by how well the partner-target revealed
the attribute to be judged (e.g., his/her emotions). This could occur whether the accuracy
was based on a face-to-face interaction that just occurred, or on a more longstanding
personal acquaintanceship.
For inference studies, three of the studies using experimental manipulation of verticality
went to lengths to measure targets’ expressive clarity and to take account of it when
comparing the accuracy of higher versus lower vertical perceivers. The first was the
positive outlier study (Alkire et al. 1968). Even though its result was not included in the
meta-analysis, the methodological features of the study are very pertinent. In that study,
college sorority members and pledges participated in a dyadic task in which they had to
communicate the shapes of figures to the partner without the partner seeing either the
figures or the communicators (i.e., communication was through the speech channel only).
To measure communication clarity in the sending participant, independent data from new
observers who were in no vertical relation to the communicators listened to the original
communications and performed the same accuracy task that the original perceivers did.
Their average accuracy was therefore an unbiased indicator of the communicators’ clarity.
148 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
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Alkire et al.’s (1968) uncorrected result showed the sorority members to be much more
accurate perceivers than the pledges. However, data from the new observers revealed that
the sorority members were in fact low on communication clarity and the authors concluded
that the pledges scored worse on accuracy than the sorority members because they had
lower quality stimulus material to use for their judgments, not because being a pledge
made them weak perceivers.
This pattern of one person’s expressive clarity impacting the other person’s perception
accuracy was again found by Snodgrass et al. (1998), which was an expanded analysis of
Snodgrass (1992), and also by Hall et al. (2006c). Those studies also showed the video-
tapes of the partners’ expressions to independent observers who made the same judgments
as those made by the original perceivers. In both the Snodgrass (1992) and Hall et al.
(2006c) studies the initial effect showed the person lower in verticality to be more accurate
than the person higher in verticality [although in Snodgrass (1992), this varied with task
characteristics so the combined trend was negative but not significant]. After taking
expressive clarity into account, however, the authors of both studies concluded that the
perceivers’ accuracy was accounted for by the expressive clarity of their partners.
Although expressive clarity was not measured in Snodgrass’s earlier (1985) study, the
same paradigm was used as in Snodgrass (1992) and one can probably assume that
expressive clarity was partly or wholly responsible for the significant negative verticality
effect in that study as well.
Notably, in all three of the studies whose authors concluded that partners’ expressive
clarity accounted for the perceiver verticality effect, the new judges of targets’ expressive
clarity were asked to make exactly the same judgments as the original perceivers had
made, a crucial feature that allows a proper disambiguation of expressive clarity from
perception accuracy. Two other articles reporting on inference accuracy made an attempt
to control for expressive clarity, but their approaches were not optimal because, in both, the
measurement of expressive clarity was not identical to what the original perceivers were
asked to do when making their inferences. Kraus et al.’s (2010, Study 2) measurement of
accuracy in the original perceivers was the averaged difference between the perceiver’s
ratings of the partner on each of 20 emotions and the partner’s self-ratings on the same 20
emotions.6 However, the new observers did not perform the task that the original per-
ceivers did (rating the partner on 20 emotions) but rather rated overall emotional ex-
pressivity. Because the new observers’ impression of the targets’ overall emotional
expressivity cannot be turned into a measure of their accuracy in judging the targets’
specific emotions, this is an imperfect way to control for the expressive clarity of the
partners. Kraus et al. (2010) were commendable, however, in trying to control for partner
expressive clarity. Although the authors reported that controlling for overall expressivity
did not change the obtained verticality difference in accuracy, which was significant in
showing the vertically lower person to be more accurate than the vertically higher person
(defined as SES), their non-optimal method for measuring expressive clarity raises doubt
about that conclusion.
Gonzaga et al. (2008) asked their original perceivers to make emotion ratings of their
partners and collected the partners’ self-ratings on the same set of emotion terms, and they
measured accuracy for each perceiver as the correlation between these two sets of ratings.
To measure expressive clarity they had coders count the frequencies of a list of discrete
nonverbal behaviors (e.g., leg opening, gaze aversion, hair flipping). The authors reported
6 This description is not what was given in the Kraus et al. (2010) article. The correct description wasprovided by personal communication from Kraus (May 9, 2011).
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 149
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that entering the nonverbal behavior coding as a control variable did not change their
overall verticality effects, which were in the direction of greater accuracy by the lower
vertical perceivers. However, it is difficult to see how that particular list of discrete non-
verbal behaviors could tell about the expressive clarity of the targets for showing emotions;
indeed, according to the authors the nonverbal behaviors were not chosen to be germane to
emotional experience, but rather to be relevant to the submission-dominance dimension.
Therefore, although the authors took the appropriate step of trying to control for partner
communication, they controlled for a kind of communication that did not conceptually
match the original accuracy measure.
One can see that drawing conclusions about the in vivo literature is problematic. To
summarize, three studies concluded that partners’ expressive clarity accounted for per-
ceiver verticality effects (Alkire et al. 1968; Hall et al. 2006c; Snodgrass et al. 1998, based
on re-analysis of Snodgrass 1992), and a fourth is strongly implicated because its method
was so similar to Snodgrass (1992) although the expressive clarity analysis was not per-
formed (Snodgrass 1985). Two studies that employed imperfect assessments of expressive
clarity concluded that perceiver verticality effects were not due to partners’ expressive
clarity (Gonzaga et al. 2008; Kraus et al. 2010). The remaining studies did not attempt to
correct for the potential expressive clarity of targets. Therefore the evidence from the
present meta-analysis suggesting that lower vertical perceivers are more accurate than
higher vertical perceivers after live interaction should be viewed with caution. Because of
this difficulty, and also because of the small numbers of studies, it was not considered
worthwhile to examine moderator effects for the in vivo studies.
Discussion
For decades, researchers have suggested that the vertical dimension of social relations is
related to accuracy of interpersonal perception, as cause or as effect. However, the
direction of this relation is not agreed on in theory, and the empirical literature is incon-
sistent. The present article documented what the literature currently shows and made
progress towards identifying the factors accounting for the great variability in studies’
results. The variability is itself one of the main findings: the results were often significantly
heterogeneous.
Testing Paradigm
Results differed according to the definition of verticality and also the method of measuring
accuracy (inference vs. recall). A person’s SES was significantly positively correlated with
more accurate inferences in the testing paradigm. Because this is a correlational result, it is
not possible to know whether it is a direct causal relation or is caused by third variables. If
it is causal, it is not clear what is cause and what is effect. Higher SES may lead to greater
accuracy in interpreting others’ cues because of distal factors such as life experiences
through which they learned the meanings of cues or acquired superior judgment strategies,
or because of factors operative at the time of testing such as higher motivation or self-
confidence. Or, in reverse, possessing superior skill could, over one’s life, advance a
person’s SES. However, this is unlikely in the present database because most studies were
on adolescents or college students for whom SES was a familial rather than individual
attribute.
150 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
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Neither pre-existing vertical position nor personality dominance showed an overall
effect on accurate inference. However, type of personality dominance was a significant
moderator. Dominant personality of a more empathic/responsible type had a positive
relation to accuracy, whereas dominant personality of a more egoistic/aggressive type had
a negative relation. This same distinction likely applies similarly to vertical roles as well,
such that the relation of vertical position to accuracy will vary with how individuals define
their roles along the same dimension, as was indeed the case in the laboratory study of
Schmid Mast et al. (2009, Study 4). In that study, participants imagining themselves to be
high power were induced to have an empathic versus egoistic mindset; those in the
empathic condition had higher accuracy on a test of decoding nonverbal affective cues than
those in the egoistic condition.
Accuracy defined as recall of information about others (in this case, what a target said)
was significantly related to experimental manipulations of verticality. High vertical indi-
viduals might be better at recalling someone’s words because they are more task- and goal-
oriented (Galinsky et al. 2003; Guinote 2010). Consistent with this, a within-study mod-
erator, noted in the Results, found that the advantage of the higher vertical people in
recalling words was much more pronounced for task-relevant than task-irrelevant com-
munications. Task-relevant words may seem more attention-worthy by a person with high
vertical position than would the emotions of another person, which may explain why
experimentally manipulated vertical positions had no impact on accuracy of inferring
target persons’ emotions (which is what the inference studies mainly measured). Perhaps a
different result would be obtained if emotions were made to be task relevant for the persons
in high vertical positions. As shown by DeWall et al. (2011), people high in verticality are
very diligent when tasks seem worth doing and this might enhance their interpersonal
accuracy, although interpersonal accuracy was not measured in that research.
The fact that experimental manipulations of vertical position had a significant impact on
recall but only a negligible effect on accuracy defined as inference is consistent with
previous research on the impact of experimentally induced accuracy motivation on
interpersonal accuracy. Hall et al. (2009b) found evidence that experiments designed to
increase motivation to be accurate in perceiving others showed no impact when the
accuracy task was based wholly or mainly on nonverbal cues, but had a positive effect (i.e.,
increased motivation led to higher accuracy) when the task was wholly or mainly based on
verbal cues, specifically recall of other people’s words or judging thoughts and feelings in
tasks for which words are the main contributor to accuracy (Gesn and Ickes 1999; Hall and
Schmid Mast 2007). Insofar as having a higher vertical position might create a positive
motivation to be accurate, our results are consistent with these earlier findings because
people with experimentally manipulated higher positions were more accurate at recall
(which was about words) but not more accurate at inference (which was mainly about
nonverbal cues).
In Vivo Paradigm
In vivo studies are those in which one person perceives another person in a one-on-one
interaction, either in the laboratory or in more naturalistic settings. Overall, there was a
significant negative relation between vertical positions and accuracy, meaning that low
position people were more accurate than high position people, with the most evident effect
being for experimental manipulations of vertical positions in relation to accurate inter-
personal inference. However, this result has to be treated with caution owing to the pos-
sibility that the perceiver’s accuracy may be accounted for by the expressive clarity of the
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 151
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other person, as explained earlier. This could mean that some perceiver verticality effects
should not be attributed to the perceiver. Strong empirical evidence from three studies that
controlled appropriately for targets’ expressive clarity supports the logic of this argument;
in all three, the authors concluded that verticality effects were due to the targets’ expressive
clarity, not the perceiver’s perceptivity. Because most of the in vivo studies either did not
correct for expressive clarity or did so in a non-optimal way (as described in Results), it is
necessary to conclude that studies using in vivo judgments permit no conclusions with
regard to perceiver vertical position. This is very unfortunate considering that in vivo
accuracy is the more interesting and true-to-life kind of accuracy. If future studies with
good controls for expressive clarity confirm a negative verticality-accuracy effect, it will
set the stage not only for research on the mechanisms involved, but also for efforts to
uncover why studies in the in vivo and testing paradigms show different results.
Heterogeneity and Moderators
Hall et al. (2005) argued that the vertical dimension is more structural than psychological:
if we know someone’s vertical position, by definition we know how high or low that person
is on that particular vertical dimension (the structure), but we do not know a great deal
beyond that. It would be important to know how the person construes his/her vertical
position (e.g., if a manager chooses a punitive, nurturant, or some other leadership style),
and about contextual aspects of that position (e.g., top dog in one’s friendship group
implies different behavior patterns than top dog in a business), as well as the cognitive,
emotional, and motivational states that might be intrinsic to that position, at least in the
given context. Also important to recognize is that many of those states are not the province
of only the vertically higher or lower person. People either high or low in verticality could
be self- or other-focused, confident or anxious, eager to accommodate or stubbornly
uncooperative, striving for power or content with their power level, motivated to be
accurate or not, cheerful or angry, and so on. Because verticality does not necessarily map
onto these states, there is little reason to theorize that vertical position per se—independent
of these construals and states—should have a consistent relation to accuracy. If the states
that impact accuracy are caused by people’s vertical position they would be mediators, but
if they are merely coincident with (i.e., not caused by) vertical position they would be
moderators. In the moderator case, the patterns of relative accuracy would undoubtedly
depend on the particular combinations of moderator variables. For example, the higher
vertical person might be high on a moderator that would make them accurate, while the
lower vertical person is high on a different moderator that would make them accurate too—
meaning there might be no difference in accuracy, but this would have nothing to do with
their relative verticality; or, there might be an accuracy difference but it’s due to one
person’s position on a moderator variable and not due to their relative verticality. A
number of authors have noted that the verticality-accuracy relation is likely to be a highly
moderated one (Galinsky et al. 2006; Hall et al. 2001; Kraus et al. 2010; Russell and Fiske
2010; Schmid Mast et al. 2009; Walter et al. 2012).
A main result of the present meta-analysis was the high degree of heterogeneity among
studies, especially in the testing paradigm. Finding that verticality has inconsistent, even
opposite, relations with behavior is not limited to the interpersonal accuracy domain (see
Guinote 2010, for a summary of contradictory results in the broader social power litera-
ture). However, our analysis of moderators yielded only a modest number of significant
results. It is unfortunate that we could not perform some moderator tests due to the small
152 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
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number of studies that varied according to a given moderator or the too-skewed distri-
bution of moderator values for a given moderator.
Despite the advantages of employing meta-analysis, more studies that examine mod-
erators on a within-study basis would greatly clarify the role of moderators. Such studies
could, for example, compare different operational definitions of verticality, different
accuracy methods or tests, or different psychological states or personality traits in the high
and low vertical people to see if the verticality-accuracy link varies systematically. Walter
et al. (2012) found that emotion recognition skill led to emergent leadership only in
conjunction with high extraversion.
Probably, it is necessary to take into account not only one or two moderators, but many
more and maybe even interactions among moderators, to find the conditions under which
higher verticality is correlated with more or less interpersonal accuracy. As an example,
high verticality might lead to more interpersonal accuracy only when the vertical position
is understood as responsibility for others (prosocial, empathic orientation) and when
interpersonal accuracy is perceived to be relevant for the task solution by the high vertical
person, or relevant to some other goal such as personal advancement or coalition building.
Furthermore, the particular kind of interpersonal accuracy that is measured (inferring
emotions, remembering words, etc.; Guinote 2010) could be relevant in interaction with
these other moderators.
Moreover, a person may possess several degrees and kinds of verticality at the same
time. For example, two bosses of the same rank may differ greatly in how much influence
and control they actually wield over others. Or, a person in a high position may feel
subjectively weak and not powerful (Bugental 2010). This fragile sense of power makes
such a person sensitive to threats and stress. For our purposes, it affects information
processing, such that it interferes with the capacity to engage in cognitively demanding
tasks. Although not explicitly stated by Bugental (2010), this could impair accuracy.
Some researchers have looked at the effect of different verticality concepts with respect
to behavioral outcomes. For instance, Lammers et al. (2008) have investigated the effect of
legitimate and illegitimate power on the approach system and found that in the legitimate
situation, high vertical individuals showed more approach behavior than low vertical
individuals whereas this difference disappeared in the illegitimate condition. In the same
vein, Maner et al. (2007) showed that high power individuals took fewer risks when their
power position was unstable. Although approach behavior and risk taking were measured
and not interpersonal accuracy, these studies suggest the hypothesis that feeling unsure of
one’s vertical position could affect interpersonal accuracy in that these individuals search
for approval by others and thus use interpersonal accuracy as a means to better navigate the
social world and to connect to the people who will approve their high position.
Locus of the Effect
As mentioned in the Introduction, an important question is whose accuracy (the higher or
lower person’s) might be impacted by their vertical positions. Unfortunately, a predomi-
nant methodology was to compare higher individuals to lower individuals without com-
parison to a baseline, neutral, control, or equal vertical position. Just comparing higher to
lower does not answer the question about locus of effect. In one of the few studies that
included a neutral group (together with high and low vertical groups), results showed that
the neutral group was closer to the low vertical than to the high vertical group in accuracy
of judging emotions, meaning that high vertical position increased accuracy more than low
vertical position decreased it (Schmid Mast et al. 2009, Study 3). However, more evidence
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 153
123
is needed to investigate whether the effects on interpersonal accuracy are driven by the
high or the low end of the dimension (or both).
Relatedly, another prevailing methodology was to calculate only the linear relation
between verticality and accuracy. As an exception, Schmid Mast et al. (2009, Study 3) had
high, neutral, and low vertical positions and looked at both linear and quadratic effects.
There was no quadratic component, only linear. However, there may be situations in which
accuracy is highest when verticality is middling or when two people have equal (con-
cordant) vertical position, and being put in either a high or low position hurts (or helps)
accuracy. Concordance could help, for example, if equal positions meant people were more
at ease and able to focus on the other person rather than being consumed with monitoring
their own behavior (Patterson 1995). On the other hand, having equal verticality to an
interaction partner could interfere with accuracy if the parties were competing and this
were somehow disruptive of their ability to process, or care about, the other’s conveyed
cues.
Mediators
Mediators would be variables that are caused by verticality and, in turn, cause accuracy to
increase or decrease. As yet, it is not clear what variables are viable candidates as
mediators, but research is still in its infancy. A number of potential mediators are prob-
lematic because their relations to either verticality or accuracy are weak, and others have
simply not been investigated.
Consider cognitive overload as a possible mediator of the verticality-accuracy relation
(Fiske 1993). If being high in verticality causes a person to be cognitively overloaded (too
many responsibilities, too many people to respond to, etc.) then that person may suffer a
deficit in interpersonal accuracy because of a literal inability to attend to others’ cues. But
if, instead, the low-vertical role causes its occupants to be overloaded (more stressed, more
confused, etc.), then that person would suffer the deficit. Thus, it is difficult to predict what
would be the relation between verticality and cognitive load. Furthermore, verticality
aside, cognitive load has an inconsistent relation to performance on interpersonal accuracy
tasks (Ambady and Gray 2002; Phillips et al. 2007, 2008; Tracy and Robins 2008). For
these reasons, it is not straightforward to posit cognitive load as a mediator between
verticality and accuracy.
Motivation to be accurate has intuitive appeal as a mediator, yet experimental manip-
ulations designed to increase such motivation often do not result in higher accuracy (Hall
et al. 2009b); sometimes, increased motivation to be accurate even hurts accuracy. Hall
et al. (2009b) did, however, find evidence that increased motivation to be accurate
improved recall of people’s words as well as inferences based on stimuli with mainly
verbal content, a finding that is relevant to results for recall accuracy in the present meta-
analysis.
Emotional state is another possible mediator. Stress, sadness, and anxiety can be
associated with lower accuracy on interpersonal accuracy tasks (Ambady and Gray 2002;
Chepenik et al. 2007; Demenescu et al. 2010; Hanggi 2004), although the reverse is
sometimes found for anxiety (Hunter et al. 2009). It has been proposed that some such
states (sadness, for example) result in lower accuracy because they induce a deliberative
judgment style that is not optimal for judging nonverbal cues (Ambady and Gray 2002). If
higher or lower verticality produced negative affective states, then these states might serve
as mediators of verticality’s impact on accuracy.
154 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
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Happy states are a potential mediator because there is evidence that people higher in
verticality have more positive mood (mostly measured as happiness) than those lower in
verticality (Anderson and Berdahl 2002; Berdahl and Martorana 2006; Langner and
Keltner 2008). More happy moods are associated with more global, holistic processing of
stimuli (Gasper and Clore 2002), which might increase accuracy to the extent that such
cognitive styles promote accuracy, although that is not clear. Schmid et al. (2011b) induced
happy and sad states in participants and then administered a facial emotion recognition test.
They found that happiness did produce more global processing, as determined through eye
tracking, but global processing was not a mediator because it was correlated with accuracy
only in the sad mood condition. Thus, whether positive mood states affect interpersonal
accuracy directly or indirectly remains an open question. Different information processing
styles in and of themselves might, however, be a potential mediator of the power-inter-
personal accuracy link.
Verticality has been shown to be related to specific information processing styles.
Relatively high verticality is related to more Gestalt-like, abstract processing (Magee and
Smith 2013; Smith et al. 2008). To the extent that an interpersonal accuracy task profits
from such an abstract processing style, increased verticality should help interpersonal
accuracy. Indeed some interpersonal accuracy tests seem to benefit from a more Gestalt-
like processing style (e.g., Schmid et al. 2011b). However, other interpersonal accuracy
tests seem to yield better results when the test taker focuses on the details (e.g., Martin
et al. 2012). Men increased their interpersonal accuracy on the PONS test when primed
with a detailed-oriented information processing style (Schmid et al. 2011a). Unless there is
better understanding of which cognitive information processing style is needed to achieve a
high score on the different interpersonal accuracy operationalizations, one can only
speculate about whether and how cognitive processing style can be a mediator of the
verticality-interpersonal accuracy link.
The fact that different studies find results that go in opposite directions might be the
reason why researchers have not yet dedicated much effort to trying to explain why high
verticality increases or decreases interpersonal accuracy. Schmid Mast et al. (2009, Study
3) found evidence for mediation of the verticality-to-accuracy path: Felt pride and felt
respect of the higher vertical person both partially mediated the positive effect of verti-
cality on interpersonal accuracy. If feeling proud and respected is indicative of under-
standing high verticality as a function accorded by others, this increased other-orientation
might be the reason why the high vertical individuals might be more interpersonally
accurate than the low.
As noted above, research does not provide strong support for variables that might
mediate an association between verticality and interpersonal accuracy. However, con-
sidering how unstable this phenomenon is, it is premature to be discussing mediators
except in a highly speculative manner. Assuming that eventually a paradigm will be
established that shows the effect in a consistent direction (either positive or negative),
mediator variables should be investigated. This is an important undertaking because if
the mechanism is understood, change can happen; for example, it would be possible to
develop targeted interpersonal accuracy training techniques for people in
organizations.7
7 Although meta-analysis has shown that training to improve interpersonal accuracy is effective, the specificmechanisms underlying the effectiveness of training are not well understood (Blanch-Hartigan et al. 2012).
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 155
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Future Directions
In light of this meta-analysis and the theoretical issues raised, it is possible to make some
concrete suggestions for future researchers pursuing this important topic.
Apply More Theory to the Choice of What Is Being Judged
Researchers should give more attention to how different contents of accuracy judgments
are objectively relevant in the situation as well as to perceivers in the situation. At present,
it is mainly affect that is studied. Researchers should ask whether such judgments are truly
relevant in the situation, and whether other kinds of content might make more sense. It
might be the case, for example, that bosses are much better than subordinates in detecting
deception, but there is no difference in recognizing emotions. If others’ emotions are
considered a distraction from the high vertical person’s goals, the high person may ignore
them and be inaccurate at judging them, while he or she may actually have heightened
accuracy for other cues that are more relevant in the situation (Guinote 2010). Ralph Exline
foresaw this very possibility long ago (Exline 1960). Alhough Exline’s study was on
sociometric status (popularity) rather than on verticality as we have defined it in this
article, nevertheless his findings showed that the relation of sociometric status to inter-
personal accuracy depended on how relevant the particular content of the accuracy mea-
surement was to the group members’ goals.
And, even within the domain of affect, it will be important to discover whether there are
differences due to the cue modality and that too could guide researchers’ choices of what to
measure. Scherer and Scherer (2011) analyzed the relation of personality dominance to
accuracy separately for judging facial emotions versus vocal emotions. There was a sig-
nificant positive correlation between dominance and accuracy of judging vocal emotions
but none for facial emotions (in the meta-analysis, the average of these effects was entered
into analysis). Thus, there may exist patterns of cue-channel specificity that could help
investigators choose what instruments to use, depending on their research goals and
settings.
Look for Alternative Causal Paths
Clearly, randomized experiments in which verticality is experimentally manipulated leave
no ambiguity about causal direction. However, many studies are correlational and often
this cannot be avoided due to real-world constraints. Nevertheless, even in purely corre-
lational studies more attention could be paid to ruling out alternative paths (whether
verticality influences accuracy or accuracy influences verticality) or investigating possible
third-variable causation. Furthermore, it should be possible to conduct experiments that
treat accuracy as the independent variable by training it and seeing its impact on verti-
cality, or longitudinal studies that measure accuracy and follow people over time to look
for changes in their verticality.
Manipulate Moderators and Measure Mediators within Studies
Although we mentioned a large number of possible moderating and mediating variables,
there are certainly more to be considered both theoretically and empirically. Examining
these effects within studies controls for extraneous variables far better than meta-analysis
can.
156 J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163
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Look for Curvilinear Effects and Verticality Concordance Effects
Curvilinear effects might show that accuracy is higher (or lower) when verticality is neither
very high nor very low. Concordance effects would tell whether the match between in-
teractants in terms of their verticality helps determine accuracy.
Control for Partners’ Expressive Clarity When In Vivo Designs Are Conducted
Until researchers routinely control for expressive clarity, it will not be possible to interpret
apparent perceiver power effects in these designs.
Do More Research Outside of the Laboratory
There are obvious trade-offs between laboratory settings where much can be controlled and
naturalistic settings where many ambiguities about cause and effect are usually present.
However, with verticality the laboratory approach risks creating an independent variable
with little motivational force, little credibility, and little consequence. In our opinion, the
demonstration that a verticality manipulation passes the standard of a self-reported
manipulation check is not sufficient grounds to believe the manipulation is potent enough
to actually produce effects on interpersonal accuracy.
Furthermore, aside from the possibility that effects would be more potent and consistent
outside the lab, it is in the real world of status, power, dominance, and hierarchy where
differences in accuracy might really matter for the welfare and outcomes of individuals and
groups.
Acknowledgments The authors thank Magali Ecabert for her assistance in coding, and the authors whoprovided their unpublished results.
Appendix: Coded Study Attributes
Year of study
Gender of first author
Sample type (college/university students, hereafter referred to as college students,
employees in organization, community people, or mix of groups)
Sample age (mean or median) and sample age group (13–17, 18–22, 23–27, 28–32,
33–37, 38–42, 43 and older, or mixed ages)
Sample size
Percentage of participants who were male
Type of design/analysis (experimental manipulation, known groups comparison, or
continuous correlation)
Type of comparison (within-dyads comparison between higher and lower vertical
partners or between-groups comparison of groups that differed in verticality)
Location (laboratory or field)
Verticality definition (role-played/assigned high and low vertical roles/imagined verti-
cal position, measured hierarchical position in organization, measured hierarchical position
in group, self-reported dominant personality, other-reported dominant personality,
behavioral measurement, SES, psychological induction other than assigned roles and if
yes, was it concept priming or autobiographical writing, self-reported feelings of verticality
J Nonverbal Behav (2015) 39:131–163 157
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in or after a situation, being minority or majority within a group, or self-reported power
vis-a-vis other family members)
If personality dominance was measured, a moderator was coded to capture the type of
dominance scale (egoistic/aggressive or empathic/responsible).
Accuracy paradigm (testing paradigm or in vivo)
Accuracy method (test, recall, correlation between perceiver and target ratings, or
difference between perceiver and target ratings)
If a test was used, which one: PONS (Rosenthal et al. 1979), DANVA (Nowicki and
Duke 1994), or other
If a test was given, content of accuracy inference (affect/emotion, personality, other’s
thoughts/feelings about self and partner, or other)
If recall was measured, content of recall (words, nonverbal cues or appearance, or
other).
Additional coding was done to estimate, from an observer’s perspective, the psycho-
logical states that the higher and lower vertical people in each study might have been
experiencing. Two coders who were blind to the studies’ results (IML and a research
assistant) performed ratings of psychological states based on the studies’ methodologies,
using two items for each of four constructs that were rated on nine-point unipolar scales:
(1) prosocial: helpful/cooperative, attentive to others’ feelings or thoughts, (2) self-cen-
tered: egocentric/concerned with own needs, wanting to promote self/self-aggrandizing, (3)
angry affect: angry/irritated, cheerful/pleasant (reversed), and (4) anxious affect: uncom-
fortable/awkward, fearful/worried. The two coders’ ratings were averaged, and the two
items belonging to each construct were averaged. These combined ratings were then
correlated with the effect sizes separately for the higher and lower vertical participants and
also after subtracting the ratings of the lower participants from the ratings of the higher
participants on each moderator, thus creating difference scores reflecting the disparity in
psychological states. Finally, given the predictions made by the social distance theory of
power (Magee and Smith 2013), namely that high power results in less interpersonal
accuracy (because high power results in feeling more distant and less similar to social
interaction partners and empathic accuracy is reduced between dissimilar interaction
partners), the two coders also directly rated the verticality gap (social distance) between the
higher and lower individuals on a 9-point scale that went from only a small gap to a very
big gap. Correlations between these variables and effect sizes were few and inconsistent.
Therefore, these moderator ratings are not discussed further.
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