An investigation of three cues within the big two framework: height, verb use and eccentricity

As humans are inherently social animals, social perception is a critical element of the human experience. However, humans cannot deal with the glut of social information in everyday life and rely on heuristics to navigate the social world. One such heuristic is the use of stereotype cues: using smaller pieces of information to make broader trait judgements. Examining the use of such cues within the Big Two social judgement framework, this thesis explores how height, verb use and eccentricity can impact social judgement in everyday life.

The first empirical chapter examines the impact of height based on previous research on its associations with leadership and power. Despite the relationships uncovered in previous research, over the course of four studies, height did not reliably impact social judgement. The second empirical chapter examines the impact of verb use, a novel social cue based on personal expression through the use of cognitive or affective verbs. It was hypothesised that these verbs would impact social perception via associations with rationality, emotionality, gender and head or heart self-location. However, the findings across five studies suggest verb use does not reliably impact social judgement, although there were judgemental differences due to varying cognitive verbs. The third empirical chapter examined the effects of eccentricity on social judgement, extending previous work relating it to creativity and investigating its judgemental impact in a generalised context. This chapter’s findings suggest eccentricity perception, and related judgements, vary depending on the presentation of eccentricity. They also uncovered the need for a suitable definition of eccentricity that encapsulated its key components without sacrificing scientific rigour. Thus, the final empirical chapter details a prototype analysis of eccentricity that revealed 23 features of eccentricity, 12 central and 11 peripheral.

These features and their division into central and peripheral are tested across three studies while eccentricity’s associations with creativity, gender and personality were examined over a further three studies. The findings suggest the 23 features represent eccentricity adequately, distinguish eccentricity from creativity and reveal eccentricity’s relationships with gender and personality.

Taken as a whole, these studies add to the scientific literature on person perception, particularly social perception within the Big Two framework, by uncovering the limits of cue effects on judgement, the importance of purpose within social perception and contributing a scientific definition of eccentricity to the psychological literature. The empirical findings stress the functional aspects of social perception and how cues are embedded within context that cannot be disregarded without subsequent impacts on perceptive motivation. Overall, these findings have valuable implications for the Big Two literature, for social cognitive processes and for professionals in the organisational sector.