Robert Gifford
Victoria, BC

My colleagues and I continue to examine personality and intelligence with lens models.

Typically, we measure a dozen or so reliably measured behavioral or appearance cues during naturalistic interviews or conversations, and then examine ecological validity and the cue utilization policies of zero-acquaintance judges who view videotapes of the interviews or conversations.

My recent study with D'Arcy Reynolds involved intelligence. High school students with a wide range of measured IQ scores served as targets. They were taped while answering thought-provoking questions (the idea was to facilitate the manifestation of intelligence, or the lack of it).

Thirteen verbal and nonverbal cues were measured, and unacquainted near-peers (college freshmen) rated the targets' intelligence in auditory-only, visual-only, and auditory+visual conditions.

Accuracy was moderate, and it was shown that accuracy was greatest in the auditory-only condition; visual cues actually seemed to reduce accuracy. Also, almost half the variance in measured intelligence was accounted for by only 5 objectively measured cues.

We like to think we are picking up where Brunswik (1945) left off (see the 1956 book, pages 26-29, Experiment D).

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