Accuracy or Bias: Judgment About Others’ Intelligence and Moral Identity in A Zero Acquaintance Condition

Some studies have revealed that most individuals tend to concentrate on others’ morality and intelligence at their social perception. The present study aimed to examine the accuracy of these social perceptions in zero acquaintance condition. Nine female students who had high, low or average moral identity/intelligence were considered as targets and the short video clips of their lectures about the same nonrelated subject were presented to other students to judge about them through three studies (total N: 208). The perceptions were full of above-than-chance inaccuracies which were repeated across the three studies. Considering the inaccurate positive account about many targets, accurate perceptions about highly moral/intelligent targets were explained by positive bias to targets than by actual accurate perception. Although beyond such bias, there were some little traces of accuracy particularly in intelligence, it seems that due to many inaccuracies especially about morality, such little traces of accuracy are not much reliable for judgments in settings with zero acquaintance.