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Abstract

When two people interact, they adjust their behavior to each other. For this, they utilize verbal or non-verbal communicative signals which are in most cases either visual or auditory. But how do people adjust their behavior with a partner when there are no possibilities to exchange visual or auditory cues? Furthermore, do people make social inferences about each mother in such a situation? In a novel experimental setup, we connected two people with a rope and they had to accomplish a joint motor task together while being separated by a blind and not able to see or hear each other. However, the participant’s confederate was always an experimenter who behaved either egoistically or cooperatively in a consistent manner. We measured the point-collecting behavior and speed of coordination during the interaction, and person-related judgments about the confederate after the interaction (n=24). Results showed strong partner-dependent changes in behavior depending on whether the partner was egoistic or cooperative (t(23)=24.21, p<0.001). In addition, an egoistic partner was more often judged as a male and bigger in size compared to a cooperative partner. These results demonstrate that partner-dependent changes in behavior and automatic judgments occur naturally even when possibilities for communication are minimal.