Page 123 - Demo

121Can third-party observers detect attraction?6= 0.04, 95% HDI [-0.02, 0.11], p+ = 89.80%; BF01 > 10). The interactionbetween Group and Attraction to Partner was reliable (see Figure 4c; β= 0.14, 95% HDI [0.07, 0.20], p+ = 100%; BF10 > 10); indicating thatchildren performed worse when the daters depicted were not attracted totheir partner compared to when they were attracted to their partner. Theinteraction between Shuffled and Attraction to Partner was not reliable (β= 0.08, 95% HDI [0.02, 0.15], p+ = 99.22%; BF10 = 0.68), as well as theinteraction between Shuffled, Attraction to Partner, and Age Group (β =-0.01, 95% HDI [-0.08, 0.05], p− = 66.25%; BF01 > 10). For that reason,these interactions are not interpreted.Discussion Experiment 1In Experiment 1, we aimed to examine if a) people accurately detect attraction; b) whether this ability is influenced Age Group (as an index ofexperience); c) synchrony between daters; and d) whether accuracy is enhanced when the daters themselves were interested in their partner. Theresults of Experiment 1 showed that participants overall did not detect attraction or the absence of it better than chance level (0.5). Regarding oursecond hypothesis, we found that children performed below chance level.Crucially, we found that videos in which couple members were attracted totheir partner were detected more accurately than ones in which they werenot. Synchrony between daters did not seem to influence the ability toaccurately detect attraction in others.A possible explanation for the low accuracy observed could be that attending to the videos required dividing attention over two separate videostreams (one for the male and one for the female). This division of attention combined with the brief duration of the video segments (3 s) mighthave impaired efficient processing of our stimuli. Indeed, previous researchhas shown that dividing attention has a negative effect on decision making(e.g., McCrink & Hubbard, 2017, for operational momentum). Therefore,in Experiment 2, we simplified our experimental procedure by presentingstimuli one-by-one.Experiment 2The results of Experiment 1 showed that synchrony does not influence theaccuracy of participants in detecting whether daters were attracted to theirpartner or not. Therefore, in this experiment, we presented the same stimulias in Study 1, with the sole difference that only one couple member was presented in every trial so as to reduce cognitive load. This adjustment allowedus to examine whether reduced cognitive load would enhance accuracy indetecting attraction. Furthermore, participants performed the experimentaltask on a personal laptop.Iliana Samara 17x24.indd 121 08-04-2024 16:36