Accurately expressing one’s unique personality in first impressions generally feels good (Mignault et al., 2022) and promotes positive social interactions (Human et al., 2020). However, people from higher socioeconomic status could have a privileged access to making accurate first impressions. Indeed, childhood home income relates to greater self-confidence and social skills (Hosokawa & Katsura, 2017; Li et al., 2018), characteristics which could foster accurate personality expression. Therefore, could household income in childhood relate to being accurately perceived in adulthood? To test this question, we conducted two naturalistic “speed-networking style” getting-acquainted studies, one exploratory in-person study (N=863; NDyads=4608) and one pre-registered videoconferencing study (N=879; NDyads=4990). Across studies, childhood home income related to accurate personality expression specifically for extraverts, potentially because extraverts generally make more personality cues available. Overall, childhood home income may promote accurate self-expression for those who provide ample information to others, likely leading to smoother and more positive interactions.
