Making trait judgments based on biological motion cues: A thinslicing approach

We wanted to investigate whether judgments of personality traits based on brief visual observations, namely the 'thin slicing' approach, can also be replicated with biological motion cues consisting of point-light stimuli when different sorts of natural human actions were carried out. We captured six different actions carried out by ten different people using a motion capture system. These actions were then judged in terms of various personal traits by 18 different raters. All actors who recorded those actions were also included as raters. The results showed significant consistency in both the ratings across different raters (inter-rater-reliability) and the ratings between the items (inter-item-reliability). Moreover, accuracy of judgments was also found with self-ratings showing a significant correlation with other people's ratings for a number of different trait judgments.