Everyday Perceiver-Context Influences on Impression Formation: No Evidence of Consistent Effects

Facial impressions (e.g., trustworthy, intelligent) vary considerably across different perceivers and targets. However, nearly all existing research comes from participants evaluating faces on a computer screen in a lab or office environment. We explored whether social perceptions could additionally be influenced by perceivers’ experiential factors that vary in daily life: mood, environment, physiological state, and psychological situations. To that end, we tracked daily changes in participants’ experienced contexts during impression formation using experience sampling. We found limited evidence that perceivers’ contexts are an important factor in impressions. Perceiver context alone does not systematically influence trait impressions in a consistent manner—suggesting that perceiver and target idiosyncrasies are the most powerful drivers of social impressions. Overall, results suggest that perceivers’ experienced contexts may play only a small role in impressions formed from faces.