Beyond Passive Observation: When Do We “Affordance Test” to Actively Seek Information about Others?

Humans are highly interdependent, living and working in close proximity with many others. From an affordance management perspective, the goal of social perception is to assess and manage potential opportunities and threats afforded by these close others. Social perceivers are thus often motivated to assess particular affordance-relevant characteristics in a target. Frequently, perceivers assess these characteristics via passive observation. Sometimes, however, making such an assessment via observation can be difficult. In these cases, perceivers may instead “affordance test”: actively manipulate the target’s circumstances to reveal (or notably not reveal) cues to the characteristic of interest. There are multiple factors hypothesized to affect whether a perceiver is more likely to passively observe or affordance test that characteristic, including factors related to the characteristic of interest, the situation, the perceiver, and the target. Here, four core hypotheses of this affordance testing framework are tested. In a Preliminary Study (analyzed N = 1301), Study 1 (analyzed N = 559), and Study 2 (analyzed N = 572), highly consistent correlational and experimental evidence was found in support of Hypothesis 1, that the less observable a characteristic is believed to be, the more likely a perceiver is to assess it via affordance testing. In the Preliminary Study, evidence supported Hypothesis 2, that the more important a characteristic is believed to be, the more likely it is to be affordance tested. In Studies 1 and 2, mixed evidence supported Hypothesis 3, that the more urgency or time pressure a perceiver feels, the more likely they are to assess the characteristic of interest via affordance testing. And in Studies 1 and 2, evidence did not support Hypothesis 4, that believed observability and felt urgency interact, such that even characteristics of moderate believed observability are highly likely to be affordance tested under higher felt urgency. Implications of these findings for the affordance testing framework, limitations of the studies, and potential future directions are discussed. In sum, the present work provides promising initial progress in understanding foundational factors that affect when perceivers are likely to affordance test—an important, yet previously understudied, component of the social information-seeking process.