Effects of cognitive demand and judgment strategy on person perception accuracy

The present study examined the effects of cognitive demand and judgment str ategy in performance on the Interpersonal Perception Task (Costanzo & Arche r, 1989). The Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT) contains 30 brief, real-l ife scenes on videotape for which there are objectively correct answers to questions about status, intimacy, kinship, competition, and deception. A to tal of 142 participants were run in a 2 (high vs, low cognitive demand) x 2 (first impression vs. nonverbal cues strategy) x 2 (audiovisual vs, visual only modality) design. A significant Cognitive Demand x Judgment Strategy interaction supported the hypothesized benefit of a first impression strate gy when participants experienced high, rather than low, cognitive demand. i n contrast, participants receiving the nonverbal cues strategy had higher a ccuracy under low, rather than high, cognitive demand. The conditional effe cts of cognitive demand on person perception are considered and the larger role of cognitive resources in interaction is discussed.