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114Chapter 6physical attraction and the likelihood of wanting to meet a partner again(Veenstra & Hung, 2011). We expected that third-party observers would besignificantly more accurate than chance level in detecting attraction, giventhe plethora of subtle expressions visible in the video segments. Based onprevious findings (Hall et al., 2015), we also aimed to examine whether detecting attraction is facilitated as a function of whether the person depictedis interested in their partner or not. Hall et al. (2015) found that lack ofattraction is easier to detect. However, if people were interested in theirpartner, they might produce more salient and interpretable cues than not,resulting in increased attraction detection accuracy.General methodsStimuliStimuli consisted of muted video fragments collected during a blind datestudy conducted at the Lowlands festival (Lowlands, the Netherlands)(Prochazkova et al., 2022). In that study, participants were seated atopposite ends of a table with a barrier blocking their partner from view (seeFigure 1). Participants were informed that they would have three separateinteractions with their partner: a first impression phase (FI; 3 s), an eyecontact phase (EC; 2 min), and a verbal interaction phase (VI; 2 min).The EC and VI phases were counterbalanced across couples. During the FIphase, the barrier was lifted, and participants saw each other in a flash of 3s and were not allowed to speak. The barrier was then lowered, obscuringthe partners from view. During the VI phase, the barrier was lifted, andparticipants were allowed to communicate with each other for 2 min. Duringthe EC phase, the barrier was lifted, and participants were not allowed tocommunicate with each. The barrier was lowered again between the VI andEC phases. Video was recorded using the Tobii wearable eye-tracker glasses(Tobii Sweden), meaning that the video of each participant reflects thefirst-person perspective of their partner. In our study, all stimuli started assoon as the barrier was lifted and continued for 3, 6, or 9 s. Only stimulifrom the FI (Study 1, Study 2, Study 3) and VI (Study 3) were used inthe present study. All stimuli were shown against a grey background.Out of the 32 videos used, 16 depicted individuals (10 men and 6 women)that indicated that they were interested in their partner (50% base rateacross all individuals). As a manipulation check, we examined differencesin frequency and duration of behaviors signaling attraction between datersattracted to their partner compared to daters that were not attracted totheir partner for FI and 9s VI stimuli. The results showed that in 9s VIstimuli, participants interested in their partner showed a greater duration ofsuch behaviors, such as coyness, than participants who were not interestedin their partner (see Supplemental Material).Iliana Samara 17x24.indd 114 08-04-2024 16:36