Behavioral Roots of Person Perception: The Deception Judgments of Customs Inspectors and Laymen

Typically, person perception research requires subjects to make inferences about others on the basis of verbal descriptions while it denies them the physical cues which may underlie many social judgments. In contrast to this traditional paradigm, we tried to assess the physical cues that people use in a social judgment and to examine the generality of their use across perceivers. Professional inspectors in the U.S. Customs Service and laymen judged whether they wanted to search airline passengers going through a mock customs inspection. An analysis of travelers' demographic characteristics and verbal and nonverbal behaviors showed that judges' decisions to search travelers were based primarily on the travelers' comportment. Comportment both mediated the effects of demographic characteristics and had direct effects on decisions. Twenty-one variables accounted for 72% of the variance in search decisions, and 6 variables accounted for 60% of the variance. Bivariate analyses show that travelers were most likely to be searched if they were young and lower class, appeared nervous, hesitated before answering, gave short answers, avoided eye contact with the interviewer, shifted their posture, and had taken pleasure trips. Individual differences among judges—inspectors versus laymen, successful versus less successful inspectors, and high self-monitors versus low self-monitors—had little effect on the cues they used. The results demonstrate the value of a social psychophysical approach to person perception that focuses on the behavior of the perceived.