What are my friends really like? How we change our perceptions of familiar others’ traits and actions

In everyday life, our pre-existing relationships influence our perceptions of others’ traits and actions. We enrolled 142 participants in a virtual escape room to examine a) whether a novel challenge changed perceptions of friends’ traits, b) how prior relationships influenced trait perceptions, and c) how prior relationships biased perceptions of behavior. Higher pre-game similarity ratings led to increases in perceptions of competence, while higher pre-game liking ratings led to increases in perceptions of sociability. These same relational factors also biased perceptions of performance during the game. Our findings demonstrate the importance of real- world relationships not only for how we change our beliefs about others’ traits, but also their importance for perceptions of the very actions we use as evidence for those beliefs.