Judgments of others’ heights are biased toward the height of the perceiver

We examined how observers use one aspect of their own morphology, height, when judging the physical characteristics of other people. To address this, participants judged the heights of people as they walked past. We tested the hypothesis that differences between participant and target height account for systematic patterns of variability and bias in height estimation. Height estimate error and error variability increased as the difference between participant height and target height increased, suggesting that estimates are scaled to observers' heights. Furthermore, participants' height estimates were biased toward two standards, demonstrating classic category effects. First, estimates were biased toward participants' own heights. Second, participants biased height estimates toward the average height of the target distribution. These results support past research on using both the body and categorical information to estimate target properties but extend to real-world situations involving interactions with moving people, such as height judgments provided during eyewitness testimony.