The Importance of Intact Senses in Mating and Social Assessments Made by Deaf Individuals

Anna Oleszkiewicz,Marta Rokosz,Paulina Idziak

doi:10.1007/s10508-021-02016-6

Abstract

Social perception is a multimodal process involving vision and audition as central input sources for human social cognitive processes. However, it remains unclear how profoundly deaf people assess others in the context of mating and social interaction. The current study explored the relative importance of different sensory modalities (vision, smell, and touch) in assessments of opposite- and same-sex strangers. We focused on potential sensory compensation processes in mate selection (i.e., increased importance of the intact senses in forming impressions of an opposite-sex stranger as a potential partner). A total of 74 deaf individuals and 100 normally hearing controls were included in the study sample. We found diminished importance of vision and smell in deaf participants compared with controls for opposite- and same-sex strangers, and increased importance of touch for the assessment of same-sex strangers. The results suggested that deaf people rely less on visual and olfactory cues in mating and social assessments, highlighting a possible role of sign language in shaping interpersonal tactile experience in non-romantic relationships.

Highlights

Relevant information can be acquired through vision (Fan et al, 2004, 2005), audition (Hughes & Miller, 2016; McAleer et al, 2014), olfaction (Roberts et al, 2005), and touch (Karremans et al 2010; Kestenbaum & Nelson, 1992; Kupers & Ptito, 2014), indicating that interpersonal perception is multimodal (Groyecka et al, 2017)
In the course of an omnibus mixed factor analysis of variance, we observed a main effect of a target, F(1, 170) = 43.73, p < 0.001, ŋ2 = 0.21, wherein overall assessments of the importance of modalities were significantly higher for an opposite-sex stranger compared with a samesex stranger (M = 3.04 ± 0.06)
We observed an interaction between target and deafness, F(1, 170) = 17.97, p < 0.001, ŋ2 = 0.096, with the follow-up comparisons indicating that significantly greater importance was attributed to the intact modalities in hearing participants compared with deaf participants with regard to an opposite-sex stranger

Summary

Introduction

Relevant information can be acquired through vision (Fan et al, 2004, 2005), audition (Hughes & Miller, 2016; McAleer et al, 2014), olfaction (Roberts et al, 2005), and touch (Karremans et al 2010; Kestenbaum & Nelson, 1992; Kupers & Ptito, 2014), indicating that interpersonal perception is multimodal (Groyecka et al, 2017). Increasing evidence suggests the significance of auditory cues in social perception. Recent studies suggest that voice preferences in the context of mating are relatively stable across the ovulatory cycle (Jünger et al, 2018a, b). The human voice prompts socially relevant information, including trustworthiness, competence and warmth, even in the absence of additional visual cues (Oleszkiewicz et al, 2016, 2017; Pisanskiet al., 2016). No relationship has been found between lower voice pitch in men and perceived economic trustworthiness, despite such a relationship being observed for mating-related trustworthiness (self-reported relationship infidelity) (Schild et al, 2020). The importance of auditory cues in social perception was highlighted in a recent study of blind individuals, concluding that the loss of vision results in enhanced importance of audition in social assessments, and that hearing is the second-most crucial modality in human interaction (Sorokowska et al, 2018).

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Discussion

Conclusion