Faster Responders Are Perceived as More Extraverted

Personality inferences are fundamental to human social interactions and have far-reaching effects on various social decisions. Fourteen experiments (13 preregistered; total N = 5,160; using audio, video, and text stimuli) involving British, U.S. American, Singaporean, and Australian participants show that people responding to a question immediately (vs. after a slight pause) are seen as more extraverted. This is because response delays are believed to signal nervousness and passivity, and hence introversion. This effect was consistently observed across a range of scenarios from everyday small talk to mock job interviews and for various types of response formats, including face-to-face, phone, and online conversations. We found that the effect was not influenced by apparent relationship closeness between the responder and questioner but that it was influenced by whether observers believed that the responder was mentally occupied during the interaction. Importantly, our results also suggest that the effect of response timing on extraversion perceptions influences hiring decisions-job applicants are more likely to be hired by mock employers for job types congruent with their level of extraversion as exuded from their response timing. Finally, we found that observers typically expect that introverted individuals would pause for longer before responding to questions, as compared to extraverted individuals. Theoretical implications for the understanding of personality impression formation and response timing and practical implications for hiring and other interpersonal situations are discussed.