Tuning in to Another Agent’s Action Capabilities

Successful social coordination usually requires one person to be able to judge the limits and abilities of another person. Two experiments investigating perception of the maximum height to which an actor could jump and reach were conducted. In both experiments those estimates were compared to estimates of the perceiver’s own maximum jump-with-reach height. Results of Experiment 1 showed that perceptions for the self improved over time, in the absence of explicit feedback, but perceptions for the other actor remained constant. Experiment 2 demonstrated that providing perceivers with perceptual information about the other actor’s action capabilities enabled perceivers to recalibrate their perceptual reports for the other actor’s maximum jump-withreach height.