The influence of social context and body size on action judgments for self and others.

Abstract

Judgments of affordances, the potential actions that an observer can carry out within an environment, require observers to relate information about their body to information in the environment. Although humans can accurately judge affordances for others, it is unknown whether other people's capability to act influences one's own affordance judgments. Based on theoretical accounts and recent empirical evidence highlighting the importance of social information in perception and action, we hypothesized that the action capabilities of another person would influence one's own affordance judgments. Participants judged their own and another's ability to pass through an aperture in 3 experiments that varied the differences in body sizes between the participant and another agent using naturally occurring body size differences or an artificial large body suit. Results showed an influence of the other's body size on self-affordance judgments only when the participant and the other agent remained in their natural body size (Experiment 3), but not when the body size differences between the participant and the other agent were extreme because of the body suit (Experiments 1 and 2).