Page 131 - Demo

129Can third-party observers detect attraction?6Video Condition (Table 3 Model 3). The model showed that participantswere more accurate when the person depicted wanted to date their part,ner than when they did not (β�=�0.17, 95% HDI [0.12, 0.23], p+�=�100%,see Figure 6b). Furthermore, we examined whether the interaction betweenAttraction to Partner and Video Condition was reliable by comparing thismodel to a more parsimonious model (i.e., excluding the interaction). Theresulting Bayes Factor revealed that the more parsimonious model was mod,erately preferred over the more complex mode (BF01�=�6.11). Therefore, theinteraction between Attraction to Partner by Video Condition is not inter,preted.Control analyses: performance in the Emotion Recognition taskWe examined accuracy in the ERT task using an intercept-only Bayesianlogistic mixed model on accuracy scores. The model showed that partic,ipants were reliably more accurate than chance level (β�=�1.13, 95% HDI[1.06, 1.19], p+ =�100%); indicating that participants were attentive dur,ing the task and could reliably detect basic emotional expressions. Onlyone participant exhibited a mean accuracy below 0.5 (M�=�0.47); excludingthis participant did not change the results of our main analyses (β�=�1.13,95% HDI [1.06, 1.20], p+�=�100%). Thus, they were not excluded from thedataset.Discussion experiment 3Our main question was whether people could accurately detect attraction.Interestingly, even when using more prolonged and more informative videosegments taken from later phases of the interaction, participants were notreliably better than the chance level in detecting whether the daters wereattracted to their partner or not. We also replicated the finding from ex,periments 1 and 2 that participants were more accurate when the persondepicted was attracted to their partner than when they were not.General discussionIn a series of three experiments, we found no strong evidence supportingthe notion that people can reliably detect attraction or its absence in thinvideo slices of people on a date based on nonverbal subtle emotional cues.However, we found that accuracy was increased based on whether the personpresented in the video was attracted to their partner. Specifically, we foundthat the third-party observers were more accurate in detecting attractionwhen the daters were attracted to their partners than detecting the absenceof attraction when the daters indicated not being attracted to their partner.In addition, recognizing attraction was not influenced by age or length ofthe stimuli presented.In accordance with previous findings (e.g., Place et al., 2009), we foundthat people cannot reliably detect attraction from initial interactions. Giventhat previous findings have emphasized the importance of subtle nonverbalcues in communicating attraction (e.g., Eibl-Eiblsfeldt, 1989; Keltner &Buswell, 1997), one might question whether the observed low accuracy indetecting attraction might be the result of a low frequency of occurrenceof behaviours associated with attraction. In other words, was there sufficient information present in the stimuli themselves that the participantsmight have picked up? Indeed, we only found minor numerical differencesin behaviours associated with attraction (e.g., coyness, genuine smiles) inthe First Impression 3-s videos (see Supplemental Material). Thus, theobserved low accuracy might result from the low frequency of behaviour occurrence. Nonetheless, our findings replicate previous research (e.g., Placeet al., 2009) further support the notion that people cannot reliably detectattraction when viewing others in the initial phases of their interaction.Our findings do not provide support for the notion that third-party observers can detect attraction when viewing segments from later phases ofa date, which contrasts with previous research (Place et al., 2009). In allexperiments, participants performed near chance level independent of thelength of the segment (3, 6, or 9 s) or the phase of the interaction (firstimpression or verbal interaction). Our analyses (see Supplemental Material) of the coded behaviours illustrate that daters that were attracted totheir partner exhibited behaviours associated with attraction for a longerduration compared to daters that were not interested in their partner (invideos taken from the middle of the speed date). This finding suggests thatthe observed low accuracy is not due to the low frequency of behaviouroccurrence. Instead, it might be more probable that people cannot detectattraction as third-party observers using thin video slices even when thesigns of attraction are there.It may be advantageous for humans to mask what they feel in certainsituations, and they often use their cognitive resources to do so (Kret, 2015).This masking might render interpreting nonverbal cues more complex andthus, lead to confusion and awkward social encounters (Abbey, 1982; Abbey& Melby, 1986) when the expressions of the sender are misinterpreted (Burgoon et al., 2002; Grammer, 1990). These factors may be a source of errorin people involved in a one-on-one interaction (i.e., a date), given that thehigh-intensity motivational environment might decrease accurate emotiondetection (Maner et al., 2005; Prochazkova et al., 2022).It has been speculated that the ability to detect attraction in othershas an adaptive function, allowing people to collect more information toguide their mating choices (see Simao & Todd, 2002). However, a moreparsimonious explanation would be that the ability to detect attraction asIliana Samara 17x24.indd 129 08-04-2024 16:36