Cues driving trait impressions in naturalistic contexts are sparse

Trait impressions are ubiquitous and shape consequential decisions. Prior work investigated what information people used for trait impressions using artificial designs. To advance a naturalistic understanding, we applied novel computational tools to quantify comprehensive cues based on prior theories (facial, bodily, clothing, environmental cues) (Study 1) and manipulate individual cues realistically (Study 2) in naturalistic images. Across two pre-registered studies (N1 = 2,435 U.S. representative; N2 = 569), we found that with rich information available, the cues predicting trait impressions were sparse. We confirmed for a subset of cues that these predictions were causal. Predictive cues carried unique information beyond the consistent information shared with other available cues. Unpredictive cues played a role by shaping the utilization of predictive cues through interactions. Together, our findings suggest that the mind may have evolved to utilize the naturalistic relations between cues to simplify what information to attend to when forming trait impressions.