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Age Similarities in Interpersonal Perception and Conversation Ability

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Abstract

Older adults tend to perform worse on emotion perception tasks compared to younger adults. How this age difference relates to other interpersonal perception tasks and conversation ability remains an open question. In the present study, we assessed 32 younger and 30 older adults’ accuracy when perceiving (1) static facial expressions, (2) emotions, attitudes, and intentions from videos, (3) and interpersonal constructs (e.g., kinship). Participants’ conversation ability was rated by coders from a videotaped, dyadic problem-solving task. Younger adults were more accurate than older adults perceiving some but not all emotions. No age differences in accuracy were found on any perception task or in conversation ability. Some but not all of the interpersonal perception tasks were related. None of the perception tasks predicted conversation ability. Thus, although the literature suggests a robust age difference in emotion perception accuracy, this difference does not seem to transfer to other interpersonal perception tasks or interpersonal outcomes.

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Notes

  1. Older adults had worse vision, t(57) = 23.72, p < .01, fewer depressive symptoms, t(53) = 10.29, p < .01, and better mood, t(58) = 18.90, p < .01, than younger adults. No participants reported difficulties viewing text on the computer monitor. Older and younger adults did not differ in fluid intelligence, t(49) = .16, p = .69, nor did they differ on the MMSE, t(51) = 1.24, p = .27; additionally, all participants scored above 26, suggesting a lack of dementia symptoms (Folstein et al. 1975). These patterns are consistent with previous studies finding older adults to have higher positive mood, fewer symptoms of depression, and worse visual acuity (Dulin and Pachana 2005; Lawton et al. 1993; Lawton et al. 1992; Mroczek and Kolarz 1998; Chasteen et al. 2002) as compared to younger adults. All participants were healthy enough to come to the lab unassisted. Differences in the covariates did not predict interpersonal perception or conversation ability.

  2. This finding should be interpreted cautiously as it may be a result of a differing difficulty level between the subgroups of the test and not suggestive of differing accuracy when perceiving certain interpersonal constructs. In other words, the IPT-15 may make it more difficult to perceive deception compared to kinship instead of suggesting that individuals are better at perceiving kinship in everyday interactions.

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  1. Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Matthew W. E. Murry & Derek M. Isaacowitz

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  1. Matthew W. E. Murry
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  2. Derek M. Isaacowitz
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Correspondence to Derek M. Isaacowitz.

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Murry, M.W.E., Isaacowitz, D.M. Age Similarities in Interpersonal Perception and Conversation Ability. J Nonverbal Behav 42, 101–111 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-017-0265-0

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