Article

What Is Typical Is Good: The Influence of Face Typicality on Perceived Trustworthiness

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the authors.

Abstract

The role of face typicality in face recognition is well established, but it is unclear whether face typicality is important for face evaluation. Prior studies have focused mainly on typicality's influence on attractiveness, although recent studies have cast doubt on its importance for attractiveness judgments. Here, we argue that face typicality is an important factor for social perception because it affects trustworthiness judgments, which approximate the basic evaluation of faces. This effect has been overlooked because trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments have a high level of shared variance for most face samples. We show that for a continuum of faces that vary on a typicality-attractiveness dimension, trustworthiness judgments peak around the typical face. In contrast, perceived attractiveness increases monotonically past the typical face, as faces become more like the most attractive face. These findings suggest that face typicality is an important determinant of face evaluation. © The Author(s) 2014.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.

... Among others, these include race, sex, age, and emotion (Forde-Smith and Feinberg, 2023). Perhaps more intricate, the human voice and certain facial features have been noted to influence social trait perception (for studies on the voice: Belin et al., 2017;McAleer et al., 2014;Schild et al., 2020;Tsantani et al., 2016; for studies on the face: Alaei et al., 2020;Merlhiot et al., 2021) including trust (for studies on the voice: Jiang et al., 2020;O'Connor and Barclay, 2017;Schirmer et al., 2020; for studies on the face: Ferguson et al., 2019;Sofer et al., 2015). In terms of vocal acoustics, it has been generally found that a lower fundamental frequency (F0), perceived as lower pitch, is judged as more trustworthy for men but not women in economic domains, yet less trustworthy in romantic situations (Schild et al., 2020). ...
... Certain facial features have also received academic interest in explaining trustworthiness. Interestingly, more typical faces are linked to greater attribution of trust than are more attractive faces (Sofer et al., 2015), but more average faces are also judged as more attractive in other studies (Langlois and Roggman, 1990). Indeed, the influence of face typicality remains a debated topic. ...
... Interestingly, we found that larger fWHR was associated with higher trustworthiness, while previous research suggests that these ratios are experienced as more dominant and aggressive (Merlhiot et al., 2021); more dominant ratios are also more trustworthy. This is not entirely consistent with previous literature suggesting that more typical faces are perceived as more trustworthy (Sofer et al., 2015), as the present visual data show a peak at the −12.5% manipulation rather than for the original faces. To our knowledge, the fWHR has not yet been investigated in the context of face typicality, and future research is encouraged to investigate its implication. ...
Article
Full-text available
Trust is an aspect critical to human social interaction and research has identified many cues that help in the assimilation of this social trait. Two of these cues are the pitch of the voice and the width-to-height ratio of the face (fWHR). Additionally, research has indicated that the content of a spoken sentence itself has an effect on trustworthiness; a finding that has not yet been brought into multisensory research. The current research aims to investigate previously developed theories on trust in relation to vocal pitch, fWHR, and sentence content in a multimodal setting. Twenty-six female participants were asked to judge the trustworthiness of a voice speaking a neutral or romantic sentence while seeing a face. The average pitch of the voice and the fWHR were varied systematically. Results indicate that the content of the spoken message was an important predictor of trustworthiness extending into multimodality. Further, the mean pitch of the voice and fWHR of the face appeared to be useful indicators in a multimodal setting. These effects interacted with one another across modalities. The data demonstrate that trust in the voice is shaped by task-irrelevant visual stimuli. Future research is encouraged to clarify whether these findings remain consistent across genders, age groups, and languages.
... It has been shown that facial distinctiveness and typicality are important for face recognition (Bartlett et al., 1984;Burton et al., 2005;O'Toole et al., 1998;Valentine, 1991;Valentine et al., 2016;Valentine & Ferrara, 1991;Vokey & Read, 1992). Morphological typicality elicits positive impressions that increase both perceived attractiveness and trustworthiness (Kleisner et al., 2023;Sofer et al., 2015Sofer et al., , 2017. Although facial trustworthiness and attractiveness assessment covary, the morphological features responsible for trustworthiness vs attractiveness can be separated (Linke et al., 2016). ...
... Although facial trustworthiness and attractiveness assessment covary, the morphological features responsible for trustworthiness vs attractiveness can be separated (Linke et al., 2016). Sofer et al. (2015) have shown that face typicality plays an important role in trustworthiness judgments; in particular, perceived trustworthiness -but not attractiveness -changes along the lines of facial typicality. Moreover, according to a cross-cultural study on Japanese and Israeli populations, ingrouptypical faces were perceived as more trustworthy than outgroup-typical faces, suggesting that when judging trustworthiness, people from different cultures use their own culture-specific cues of facial typicality (Sofer et al., 2017). ...
... Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4726896 P r e p r i n t n o t p e e r r e v i e w e d Previous research has discovered a close association between facial typicality and trustworthiness (Sofer et al., 2015(Sofer et al., , 2017. We have investigated the constituents of perceived typicality in natural nonmanipulated faces and using both structural typicality (averageness) and perceived typicality, i.e., the extent to which people are perceived as belonging to one's own group. ...
... Sofer et al. [14] argue that trustworthiness judgments peak around the "typical face", whereas attractiveness increases beyond the typical face. Thus, detecting the face typicality plays an important role in face evaluation. ...
... Taken together, these findings suggest that the high level of perceived trustworthiness of the typical face likely arises from the inherent preference for typicality, mediated by familiarity." [14]. ...
... Familiarity may also play a role. Sofer et al. [14] claim that "Typicality and perceived familiarity are highly correlated [16,17]. Familiarity enhances positive affect toward objects [18], and familiar faces are liked more and judged to be safer than unfamiliar faces [19]. ...
Article
Full-text available
This article demonstrates the use of a card sorting game that is suitable for field stud- ies. Subjective judgment in face perception is studied by sorting faces based on attractiveness or trustworthiness. Are beautiful people also trustworthy, or does beauty come with a price? Our first hypothesis is that the two conditions like and trust are different. We investigate this using a sorting game, where participants are asked to sort 27 semi-artificial portraits according to how much they like or trust the faces. The faces are in two different conditions: prototypes and individualized prototypes. Our participants were consistent in their judgments. Participants claim to have reacted to small inconsistencies in facial expressions in the trust condition, and we investigate the relation to anatomical features using a model and Correspondence Analysis.
... The most distinctive feature among people is their facial features that become stereotypically associated with racioethnic categories (Zebrowitz, 2011). Recent studies suggest that the distance from cultural-specific face typicality significantly affects impression (Kleisner et al., 2019;Sofer et al., 2015;Sofer et al., 2017;Todorov et al., 2015). For example, suppose a person's facial appearance resembles the phenotypical stereotype of what a racialized group in one's local environment looks like. ...
... Groups with low diversity in face phenotype have typical facial standards, which then constitute an important standard for evaluating new faces (Sofer et al., 2015;Sofer et al., 2017;Todorov et al., 2015). Recent studies suggest that perceived trustworthiness increases as the facial appearance gets closer to the typical face (Sofer et al., 2015). ...
... Groups with low diversity in face phenotype have typical facial standards, which then constitute an important standard for evaluating new faces (Sofer et al., 2015;Sofer et al., 2017;Todorov et al., 2015). Recent studies suggest that perceived trustworthiness increases as the facial appearance gets closer to the typical face (Sofer et al., 2015). However, in another line of a study conducted by Sofer et al. (2017), perceived trustworthiness is influenced by culture-specific face typicality. ...
Article
Recent evidence suggests that culture-specifc face typicality has an impact on making trait judgments. Additionally, facial resemblance to one’s culture-typical faces causes them to be perceived as reliable, less dangerous, and more accurately recognized. When judging persons from other cultural origins, one’s own culture’s face standards might shape inferences, behavior, and memory. In this study, the partners’ facial resemblance to participants’ culturally typical faces was manipulated using target faces, considered to be higher or lower, similar to people living in the participants’ hometown. Participants were asked to invest in a company together with partners who have a higher and lower resemblance to their own-culture typical faces in a cooperation game. The results showed that facial resemblance to own-culture typical faces affected investment preferences. Partners with a higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces were more correctly distinguished in the old– new recognition memory task. The study found that partners with a higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces had a source memory advantage for cheating behaviors. These results confrmed that a higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces provide an advantage in cross-cultural interactions, allowing them to become better recognized. Additionally, enhanced source memory for cheaters with higher resemblance to own-culture typical faces may indicate a fexible cognitive system that is sensitive to information that violates social expectations.
... Studies have demonstrated that internal states, such as the need to seek rewarding stimuli and avoid aversive ones, affect social behaviors such as generosity, trust, aggression, and affiliation. [5][6][7] Other influences on SDM include the ability to attribute mental states, such as beliefs, intentions, and desires, to oneself and others, and it is also influenced by social norms and personality traits. 8,9 To assess SDM, game paradigms are often used and, among them, the ultimatum game 10 (UG) stands out. ...
... The age (17-22, 60-69, and 70-79 years) and schooling (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11), and ! 12 years) groups were compared using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The normality of the data was tested using the Shapiro-Wilk test, and none of the variables followed normal distribution in the studied groups. ...
Article
Full-text available
Background Social decision-making (SDM) is often studied through gaming paradigms, in which participants allocate resources among themselves and others based on predefined rules. In an adapted version of the ultimatum game (UG), SDM behavior was modulated in response to the degree of fairness of monetary offers and the social context of opponents, designed to generate either prosocial or punishing behaviors. Objective To investigate whether SDM evaluated by the UG is affected by age and schooling, as it is relevant to know whether sociodemographic variables may bias UG results. Methods A total of 131 healthy adults participated: 35 young university students and 96 participants in Universidade de São Paulo's USP 60+ program (formerly known as Universidade Aberta à Terceira Idade, a program for people aged ≥ 60 years to attend university). The sample was divided into 3 age groups (17–22, 60–69, and 70–79 years) and 3 schooling groups (4–8, 9–11, and ≥ 12 years of schooling). Results Age and schooling did not affect performance in fair monetary offers. Differences were observed in the unfair conditions. The oldest group (70–79 years) accepted less frequently the baseline unfair offers (without social context), when compared with the 17–22 and the 60–69 years groups (17–22 = 60–69 > 70–79). Regarding the prosocial unfair and punishing unfair conditions, older adults accepted such offers more frequently (17–22 < 60–69 = 70–79). Schooling effects were not observed. Conclusion In the context of SDM, older adults may show prosocial behaviors more frequently than younger adults. The findings suggest performance in the UG is affected by age, but not by schooling.
... These four types of processing fluency are important constructs in (consumer) psychology because processing fluency is generally experienced as hedonically positive (e.g., Landwehr & Eckmann, 2020), which transfers to positive evaluations of the stimulus that triggered the fluency. Moreover, information that is presented fluently is judged as more trustworthy (e.g., Sofer et al., 2015), likely to occur (e.g., Landwehr et al., 2023), and as being true (e.g., Reber & Schwarz, 1999). ...
... Third, processing fluency can also trigger semantic inferences about stimulus characteristics based on a person's naïve theories about the meaning of fluent processing (e.g., Schwarz, 2004). For instance, fluent processing can make people judge products to be safe (Dohle & Siegrist, 2014), given information to be true (Reber & Schwarz, 1999), future events to be likely , and other people to appear trustworthy (Sofer et al., 2015). Fourth, when people are motivated and able to invest high amounts of cognitive energy such that they think very carefully about a stimulus (e.g., when visiting a museum for modern art), initially disfluent stimuli that offer a potential for learning and the discovery of novel aspects can be preferred (Graf & Landwehr, 2015). ...
... At first glance, it may be argued that the morphing procedure being employed for only androgynous faces increased the attractiveness of the faces in Study 1-3, owing to their proximity to the average face (Rhodes et al., 2002; but see, Sofer et al., 2015). However, this explanation is unlikely for two main reasons. ...
... Moreover, prior studies suggested that sex typicality (especially the femininity of women, but also the masculinity of men) relates to perceptions of attractiveness for both heterosexual and homosexual individuals(Rieger et al., 2011). Indeed, face typicality was shown to impact perceived trustworthiness but not attractiveness(Sofer et al., 2015).Even if we assume that averageness is universally attractive, this concept primarily applies when morphing two faces within the same biological sex. However, it does not hold as true when morphing between male and female faces. ...
Article
Full-text available
Postulating a negative bias towards social ambiguity, we conducted cross-cultural online research to assess whether categorical discrepancies in the perception of androgynous faces were associated with the uncanny feeling and inferences of different morality. Across four studies, we found that androgynous faces were harder to classify into a binary sex category than sex-typical faces, but this difficulty did not influence social judgements of androgynous targets in a negative fashion. In Study 1 (Spanish-speaking sample, N = 76), we found that androgynous faces were rated as more trustworthy, less creepy, and less morally different than sex-typical faces. Study 2 replicated most of the findings from Study 1 in an Italian sample (N = 45). Positive bias towards androgyny was not replicated with a different set of stimuli featuring faces of diverse ethnic backgrounds (Study 3, Spanish-speaking sample, N = 140). However, results revealed a main effect of ethnicity in participants’ responses. When controlling for the effect of morphing procedures in stimuli selection, an overall positive bias towards androgynous targets arose, especially when compared to masculine targets (Study 4, Spanish-speaking sample, N = 85). These findings suggest that, at least in certain conditions, a positive social bias towards androgynous faces may emerge that does not depend on categorical uncertainty and facial attractiveness.
... Trustworthy is defined as "deserving of trust, or able to be depended on" (1), and trust is defined as "to that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable" (1). Aspects such as emotional expressions, gender, and expected characteristics affect our perception of trustworthiness and when a person does not know someone, first impressions become important and can be triggered by initial physical appearance (2)(3)(4)(5)(6). ...
... For gender influence, female passengers indicated more trust in female drivers than male drivers (Figure 2), whereas men did not consider gender as an important factor for selecting the driver. These results support previous investigations that expressed that women's faces are more trustable (3,5). Our results agree with this statement in that female drivers were significantly preferred over male drivers by female passengers (Figure 2). ...
Article
The first assessment of another person’s trustworthiness may depend on several factors, such as previous experiences, education, cultural context, and prejudices, but also on the physical attributes and appearance of the person. We hypothesized that different physical traits would affect teenagers’ initial trust of an unknown person and that they would give greater trust to women and people of similar ethnicity. To test this hypothesis, we developed a survey to determine the sets of physical characteristics that affect a person's trustworthiness, including gender, skin color/ethnicity, and facial expressions by asking teenagers to select pictures of young adults presented in pairs based on their physical appearance. For this, 52 teenage volunteers answered this survey in which each of the questions displayed two computer-generated images of people that represented hypothetical Uber drivers of the same age with different physical characteristics. The participants selected the person they preferred to have as an Uber driver based only on the images shown. Results indicated that female participants preferred women drivers, but male participants had no preference for the driver´s gender. Mexican drivers were selected less than white or black drivers, and participants trusted a smiling expression over neutral expressions. We concluded that gender and expression were the main physical traits associated with how trustworthy an individual looks, while ethnicity was also important.
... existence of such a stereotype have generally focused on the effects of prominent facial anomalies [16][17][18] , it is possible that this stereotype also extends to the effects of more subtle deviations from prototypical face shapes on perceptions of trustworthiness. Consistent with this possibility, Ryali et al. 19 recently reported that the statistical typicality of face images was positively correlated with ratings of their trustworthiness [see also 20 . ...
... The significant negative relationship between trustworthiness ratings and shape distinctiveness is consistent with previous research reporting that trustworthy-looking faces tend be more typical 19,20 . It is also consistent with the 'anomalous-is-bad' stereotype 16 , which refers to the tendency for perceivers to ascribe negative personality traits to individuals with atypical physical appearances 16 . ...
Article
Full-text available
Perceptions of the trustworthiness of faces predict important social outcomes, including economic exchange and criminal sentencing decisions. However, the specific facial characteristics that drive trustworthiness perceptions remain poorly understood. Here we investigated this issue by exploring possible relationships between ratings of the trustworthiness of face images and objective assessments of two aspects of face shape that researchers have previously argued are important for perceptions of trustworthiness: distinctiveness and sexual dimorphism. Here we report that faces with more distinctive shapes are rated as less trustworthy, but that sexual dimorphism of face shape is not significantly correlated with trustworthiness ratings. These results suggest that distinctiveness of face shape plays a more important role in trustworthiness perceptions than does sexual dimorphism and suggest that perceptions of trustworthiness may stem, at least in part, from the ‘anomalous-is-bad’ stereotype.
... Most studies converge to the point that trustworthylooking faces have elevated brow ridges, prominent cheekbones, lower upper facial width-to-height ratio, and wider chin. Besides this, perceived trustworthiness was reported to be positively related to facial self-resemblance (DeBruine, 2002;Farmer et al., 2014) and facial typicality (Sofer et al., 2015). Results on the association between facial attractiveness and perceived trustworthiness are contradictive (Wilson and Eckel, 2006;Sofer et al., 2015). ...
... Besides this, perceived trustworthiness was reported to be positively related to facial self-resemblance (DeBruine, 2002;Farmer et al., 2014) and facial typicality (Sofer et al., 2015). Results on the association between facial attractiveness and perceived trustworthiness are contradictive (Wilson and Eckel, 2006;Sofer et al., 2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
The ability to trust others, including strangers, is a prerequisite for human cooperation. Economically it is not rational to trust strangers, as trust can be easily exploited. Still, generally, the level of trust toward strangers is relatively high. Trust is closely related to trustworthiness: when trusting others, one expects them to reciprocate. Some individuals elicit more trust than others. Apparently, humans use subtle cues for judging the trustworthiness of their interaction partners. Here, we report on an experiment that investigates trust and trustworthiness in a population of 176 mainly Dutch students. The aims of our study were: (1) to investigate how the sex of interaction partners and their facial appearance (femininity/masculinity) affect the degree of trust and trustworthiness, compared to fully anonymous conditions; (2) to test whether individuals who elicit trust in their interaction partners are trustworthy themselves. Each subject of our experiment played five one-shot Trust Games: one with an anonymous interaction partner, and four “personalized” games after seeing a 20 s silent video of their interaction partner (twice same-sex, and twice opposite-sex). The degree of facial sexual dimorphism was investigated with geometric morphometrics based on full-face photographs. Our results revealed that, despite the already high level of trust in the anonymous setting, the personalization of interactions had a clear effect on behavior. Females elicited more trust in partners of both sexes. Interestingly, females with more feminine faces elicited less trust in both male and female partners, while males with more masculine facial shape were more trusted by females, but less trusted by males. Neither sex nor facial femininity/masculinity predicted trustworthiness. Our results demonstrate that (1) sex and sex-related facial traits of interaction partners have a clear effect on eliciting trust in strangers. However, (2) these cues are not reliable predictors of actual trustworthiness.
... Instead, our findings clearly indicate a global preference for the norm, where individuals gravitate towards averaged or expected facial features, aligning more with information processing and evolutionary-based theories of attractiveness, like the facial averageness theory (Langlois and Roggman 1990). Indeed, facial averageness has long been cited as an attractiveness marker (Langlois and Roggman 1990;Thornhill and Gangestad 1993;Apicella et al. 2007) and might be extended to trustworthiness also (Sofer et al. 2015). It is proposed that since prototypical faces are cognitively easier to treat and classify, humans would be biased towards averaged features, for the purpose of easier extraction of relevant social information (McArthur and Baron 1983;Langlois and Roggman 1990;Trujillo et al. 2014). ...
Article
Full-text available
Scleral exposure in humans has gained growing interest due to its debated uniqueness and potential role in gaze signaling and social behaviors. This article presents the main methods of scleral exposure assessment and investigates their reliability and impact on behavioral research. We reviewed the protocols, benefits, and limitations of commonly used measures; the Sclera Size Index (SSI), Total Scleral Area (TSA), and Scleral Area Ratio (SAR). Reliability assessments between raters and between methods were conducted using multiple Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICC). We then measured the relationship between scleral exposure and social ratings (trustworthiness, attractiveness, fearfulness) and compared the results for each metric. The review indicated that SSI provides straightforward assessments but may overlook true scleral exposure, TSA offers precision but faces challenges regarding standardization, and SAR seems to balance accuracy with normalization. ICC results for SSI measurements suggested poor to good between-raters reliability, while ICC results for all different measures ranged from moderate to good reliability. Regarding scleral size exposure and social ratings, we found that results differed across measurement methods. SAR showed quadratic associations between scleral exposure and trustworthiness, attractiveness, and fearfulness, with averaged scleral sizes generally receiving more favorable judgments, while TSA did not yield a significant association with trust or attractiveness and SSI found no significant associations with fear ratings. To conclude, the global preference for averaged scleral sizes deepens the disputed role of scleral conspicuousness on social behaviors, and while standardization improvements in current protocols are critical, SAR seems to be a reliable and promising metric.
... distinctive faces) that are more representative of the population (Damon et al. 2017;Morris and Wickham 2001;Potter and Corneille 2008;Rhodes and Tremewan 1996;Vokey and Read 1992). The typicality of physical appearance has even been found to positively affect trustworthiness judgements (Sofer et al. 2015(Sofer et al. , 2017Todorov et al. 2015), which, in turn, are positively associated with funding campaign success, especially for female entrepreneurs (e.g. Duan et al. 2020). ...
... This could also be explained by the association between trustworthy-looking facial appearance and ethnic typicality. Previous research has provided evidence that people with facial morphology closer to ingroup standards are perceived as more trustworthy and competent (Sofer et al., 2015(Sofer et al., , 2017. The strong association between both perceived and measured ingroup membership (facial typicality) was also corroborated by recent works (Kleisner et al., 2024;Tracy et al., 2020). ...
Article
Human migration is an increasingly common phenomenon and migrants are at risk of disadvantageous treatment. We reasoned that migrants may receive differential treatment by locals based on the closeness of their facial features to the host average. Residents of Türkiye, the country with the largest number of refugees currently, served as participants. Because many of these refugees are of Arabic origin, we created target facial stimuli varying along the axis connecting Turkish and Arabic morphological prototypes (excluding skin colour) computed using geometric morphometrics and available databases. Participants made judgements of two universal dimensions of social perception–warmth and competence–on these faces. We predicted that participants judging faces manipulated towards the Turkish average would provide higher warmth and competence ratings compared to judging the same faces manipulated towards the Arabic average. Bayesian statistical tools were employed to estimate parameter values in multilevel models with intercorrelated varying effects. The findings did not support the prediction and revealed raters (as well as target faces) to be an important source of variation in social judgements. In the absence of simple cues (e.g. skin colour, group labels), the effect of facial morphology on social judgements may be much more complex than previously assumed.
... Previous work has uncovered a long list of facial features that influence first impressions, such as skin texture and wrinkles (Hess et al., 2023;, averageness and gender-typicality (A. L. Jones & Jaeger, 2019;Sofer et al., 2015), skin color (Fink et al., 2006), and resemblances to emotion expressions (e.g., naturally tilted corners of the mouth that resemble a subtle smile or scowl; Jaeger & Jones, 2022;Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). Although the effects of facial appearance on impressions and behavior are usually studied either by examining natural variation in facial features or by digitally altering facial features in photos and videos, people also engage in various practices that change their appearance to elicit more positive first impressions. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
People across cultures engage in various practices that alter their appearance (e.g., makeup, tanning, facial aesthetic treatment). Theories in social and evolutionary psychology propose that the primary function of these practices is to create an appearance perceived more positively by others, ultimately resulting in more favorable outcomes in social, romantic, or professional relations. In two preregistered studies that improved upon and extended prior work, we tested the effect of popular types of minimally invasive facial aesthetic treatment on how people are perceived by others. Study 1 (2,720 raters, 114 targets) showed that treatment significantly increased perceived attractiveness (a 0.09-point change on a 7-point scale), but not perceived approachability (e.g., trustworthiness) or capability (e.g., competence). Study 2 (481 raters, 81 targets) showed that treatment significantly increased their desirability as a short-term romantic partner (a 0.10-point change on a 7-point scale) and platonic friend (a 0.08-point change on a 7-point scale), but not their desirability as a long-term romantic partner. Thus, our results suggest that a single session of minimally invasive facial aesthetic treatment leads to more positive perceptions on dimensions related to attractiveness, but these effects are relatively small.
... For the most part, individuals with faces that best fit stereotype-based preconceptions (e.g., feminine women, masculine men) elicit elevated levels of stereotype activation and application [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] . For example, in the context of gender-typed occupations, the relative femininity/masculinity of faces impacts both candidate evaluations and hiring decisions, with outcomes determined by the degree to which role-related expectations and facial appearance correspond (i.e., stereotype-representative faces are preferred for gender-typed roles [29][30][31] . ...
Article
Full-text available
Counterstereotypes challenge the deleterious effects that gender-typed beliefs exert on people’s occupational aspirations and lifestyle choices. Surprisingly, however, the critical issue of how readily unexpected person-related knowledge can be acquired remains poorly understood. Accordingly, in two experiments in which the facial appearance of targets was varied to manipulate goodness-of-stereotype-fit (i.e., high vs. low femininity/masculinity), here we used a probabilistic selection task to probe the rate at which counter-stereotypic and stereotypic individuals can be learned. Whether occupational (Expt. 1) or trait-related (Expt. 2) gender stereotypes were explored, a computational analysis yielded consistent results. Underscoring the potency of surprising information (i.e., facial misfits), knowledge acquisition was accelerated for unexpected compared to expected persons, both in counter-stereotypic and stereotypic learning contexts. These findings affirm predictive accounts of social perception and speak to the optimal characteristics of interventions designed to reduce stereotyping outside the laboratory.
... Face typicality is an important factor in social perception because it influences trustworthiness judgments. And the trustworthiness judgment is like the basic evaluation of the human face (Sofer et al., 2015). Wilson and Rule (2015) demonstrated how perceptions of people's faces might be biased and influence their daily lives. ...
Article
Full-text available
Trustworthiness is the most significant predictor of trust and has a significant impact on people’s levels of trust. Most trustworthiness–related research is empirical, and while it has a long history, it is challenging for academics to get insights that are applicable to their fields of study and to successfully transfer fragmented results into practice. In order to grasp their dynamic development processes through the mapping of network knowledge graphs, this paper is based on the Web of Science database and uses CiteSpace (6.2.R4) software to compile and visualize the 1,463 publications on trustworthy studies over the past 10 years. This paper aims to provide valuable references to theoretical research and the practice of Trustworthiness. The findings demonstrate that: over the past 10 years, trustworthiness-related research has generally increased in volume; trustworthiness research is concentrated in industrialized Europe and America, with American research findings having a bigger global impact; The University of California System, Harvard University, and Yale University are among the high-production institutions; the leading figures are represented by Alexander Todorov, Marco Brambilla, Bastian Jaeger, and others; the core authors are distinguished university scholars; however, the level of cooperation of the core author needs to be improved. The primary journal for publishing research on trustworthiness is the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Biology Letters. In addition, the study focuses on three distinct domains, involving social perception, facial clues, and artificial intelligence.
... Previous studies have highlighted the importance of characteristics such as trustworthiness, expertise (Lirgg and Feltz, 1991;Rakoczy et al., 2009), and attractiveness of a model (Makuch et al., 2011). Trustworthiness assessments have been associated with facial cues (Sofer et al., 2015;Kaisler and Leder, 2016), while attractiveness influences how observers perceive a model's social status (Little et al., 2011), which has already been linked to OL-induced placebo analgesia (Bieniek and Bąbel, 2021). However, the exact facial characteristics that mediate the effect of faces as stronger cues for pain conditioning (Egorova et al., 2017) are yet to be clarified. ...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction Observational learning (OL) refers to learning through observing other people’s behavior. OL has been suggested as an effective and simple tool to evoke treatment expectations and corresponding placebo and nocebo effects. However, the exact mechanisms by which OL shapes treatment outcomes, its moderating factors and possible areas of application remain unclear. We thus reviewed the existing literature with two different literature searches to answer the following questions: Which influencing factors contribute to OL-induced placebo and nocebo effects (in healthy volunteers and patients) and how large are these effects (search 1)? In which medical fields has OL been used so far to modulate treatment expectancy and treatment outcomes in patients, their caregivers, and at-risk groups (search 2)? We also aimed to explore whether and how the assessment of treatment expectations has been incorporated. Methods We conducted two independent and comprehensive systematic literature searches, both carried out on September 20, 2022. Results We identified 21 studies that investigated OL-mediated placebo and nocebo effects for pain and itch, the (placebo) efficacy of sham treatment on anxiety, and the (nocebo) induction of medication side effects (search 1). Studies showed that OL can efficiently induce placebo and nocebo effects across different presentation modes, with medium effect sizes on average: placebo effects, d = 0.79 (range: d = −0.36–1.58), nocebo effects, d = 0.61 (range: d = 0.04–1.5). Although several moderating factors have been investigated, their contribution to OL-induced effects remains unclear because of inconsistent results. Treatment expectation was assessed in only four studies. Regarding medical applications of OL (search 2), we found 12 studies. They showed that OL was effectively applied in preventive, therapeutic and rehabilitative interventions and that it was mainly used in the field of psychosomatics. Discussion OL effects on treatment outcomes can be both positive and negative. Future research should investigate which individuals would benefit most from OL and how OL can be implemented most effectively to induce placebo and avoid nocebo effects in clinical settings. Systematic review registration This work was preregistered at the Center for Open Science as open-ended registration (doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/FVHKE). The protocol can be found here: https://archive.org/details/osf-registrations-fvhke-v1.
... The lower shape variation of AI-generated faces points to their higher levels of averageness and since objects closer to the average are more common, people are likely to perceive them as more typical and therefore more natural (and more 'real'). In other words, natural faces are more variable, which also implies that in a sample of natural faces one finds more distinctive faces than in an AI-generated sample -and because distinctive faces are encountered less frequently, they are perceived as less natural, and therefore also less trustworthy (Sofer et al. 2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
Some recent studies suggest that artificial intelligence can create realistic human faces subjectively unrecognizable from faces of real people. We have compared static facial photographs of 197 real men with a sample of 200 male faces generated by artificial intelligence to test whether they converge in basic morphological characteristic such as shape variation and bilateral asymmetry. Both datasets depicted standardized faces of European men with a neutral expression. Then we used geometric morphometrics to investigate their facial morphology and calculate the measures of shape variation and asymmetry. We found that the natural faces of real individuals were more variable in their facial shape than the artificially generated faces were. Moreover, the artificially synthesized faces showed lower levels of facial asymmetry than the control group. Despite the rapid development of generative adversarial networks, natural faces are thus still statistically distinguishable from the artificial ones by objective measurements. We recommend the researchers in face perception, that aim to use artificially generated faces as ecologically valid stimuli, to check whether their stimuli morphological variance is comparable with that of natural faces in a target population.
... Changeable face features, on the other hand, such as changes in gaze direction to signal an action intention or facial expression to signal an emotional state, are processed by the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS; see 22 for a review). But how strongly will hyper-photorealistic yet synthetically generated face stimuli, such as images of deepfakes or androids, trigger face-typical processing [23][24][25] ? Hyper-photorealistic depictions are easy to produce with deep-learning models, such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), which pit a generator and a discriminator neural network against each other so that-over multiple iterations-the generator learns to synthesize increasingly realistic face stimuli until the discriminator is unable to distinguish them from real faces 11 ; similar results can be obtained using diffusion models 26 . ...
Article
Full-text available
Roboticists often imbue robots with human-like physical features to increase the likelihood that they are afforded benefits known to be associated with anthropomorphism. Similarly, deepfakes often employ computer-generated human faces to attempt to create convincing simulacra of actual humans. In the present work, we investigate whether perceivers’ higher-order beliefs about faces (i.e., whether they represent actual people or android robots) modulate the extent to which perceivers deploy face-typical processing for social stimuli. Past work has shown that perceivers’ recognition performance is more impacted by the inversion of faces than objects, thus highlighting that faces are processed holistically (i.e., as Gestalt), whereas objects engage feature-based processing. Here, we use an inversion task to examine whether face-typical processing is attenuated when actual human faces are labeled as non-human (i.e., android robot). This allows us to employ a task shown to be differentially sensitive to social (i.e., faces) and non-social (i.e., objects) stimuli while also randomly assigning face stimuli to seem real or fake. The results show smaller inversion effects when face stimuli were believed to represent android robots compared to when they were believed to represent humans. This suggests that robots strongly resembling humans may still fail to be perceived as “social” due pre-existing beliefs about their mechanistic nature. Theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed.
... Attractiveness can also influence the perception of confidence level [20], [89], [95]. In these studies, results obtained using competition-based laboratory games showed that attractive people are more able to gain the trust of others. ...
Article
Full-text available
Trust is a fundamental element in human relationships, playing a crucial role in decision-making processes. Despite its significance, numerous dimensions of perceived trustworthiness remain unexplored and warrant further investigation. Previous literature has highlighted the influence of emotions and sentiments on how individuals perceive trustworthiness, with visual, vocal, and behavioral cues serving as essential markers. This preliminary study aims to expand the existing knowledge in the field by investigating trustworthiness traits manifested through facial and gesture expressions in emotional videos across diverse cultural contexts. To address this objective, an annotation platform was developed to collect annotation data using the benchmarked One-Minute-Gradual Emotion (OMG) audiovisual corpus, enabling the annotation of actors’ perceived trustworthiness levels alongside other inquiries related to emotional state, gesture, activeness, comfort, and speech integrity. The findings of this study demonstrate a positive correlation between higher levels of speaker activity, faster gesturing, and a relaxed demeanor with increased levels of trust gained from audiences. The proposal presented in this paper holds potential for future studies focused on trustworthiness annotation, facilitating the measurement of trust-related features. Moreover, this research serves as a critical step towards understanding the foundations of trustworthiness in the development of synthetic agents that require perceived trustworthiness, particularly in domains involving negotiations or emergency situations where rapid data collection plays a pivotal role in saving lives.
... An additional conjectural reason for why people may develop a female default face comes from a separate literature on face perception and the connection between typical faces and positive attributes. A well-established finding is that the more a face resembles a typical face (operationalized as the average of many faces), the more people see it as having positive attributes such as attractiveness, happiness, and trustworthiness (Dotsch et al., 2016;Sofer et al., 2014). Women also tend to elicit positive reactions and are regarded as happier and more trustworthy than men (Eagly et al., 1990;Kveraga et al., 2019;Miles, 2009). ...
Article
People tend to think of the prototypical person as a man more than as a woman, but this bias has primarily been observed in language-based tasks. Here, we investigated whether this bias is also present in the mental imagery of faces. A preregistered cross-cultural reverse-correlation study including participants from six WEIRD and non-WEIRD countries varying in gender equality (i.e., China, Ghana, Norway, Pakistan, Turkey, and the US; N = 645) unexpectedly suggested that people imagine the face of a generic “person” more as a woman than as a man. Replicating this unexpected result, a second preregistered study ( N = 115) showed that U.S. participants imagine the face of a typical person as being more similar to their imagined face of a woman than of a man. We discuss explanations for these unexpected findings, including the possibility that the prototypical person is male-biased—consistent with previous work—but the default face may be female-biased.
... The ad versions were created similarly to those in Study 1. The idea for manipulating different lev-els of female beauty was adopted from Sofer et al. (2015) who created a face-typicality scale. Contrary to what these authors did, our manipulation shows the same person per brand that was modified by image processing. ...
Article
There is a public debate about whether marketers should be required to provide information about photoshopping when they use idealized images of female ad models. Proponents of such information expect that this measure will counteract diminished self-esteem in young females and reduce consumer deceptions. In two experiments, we examine the effects of three factors: the depiction of female ad models in their idealized vs. Authentic appearance, the presence vs. absence of information that an idealized model has been digitally retouched, and the presence vs. Absence of information that a model shown in her authentic appearance has not been digitally retouched. We contribute to research as we focus on the impact on brand attitudes while previous research has mainly focused on the influence on self-esteem. We present new findings that could assist decisions in practice: For most beauty product categories, we find that non-extreme levels of model idealization result in highest brand attitudes. Information about photoshopping ad modelspromoting beauty products leads to lower brand attitude. Information about the non-use of photoshopping authentic ad models tends to result in higher brand attitudes.
... Strangers who look more similar to the people in the local community appear healthier [12]. The analyses reported here indicate that similarity to locals has a further positive effect, not mediated by apparent health, on strangers' perceived assetsthat is, on the likely benefits of interacting with them (see also [41]). The impact of familiar-looking traits on positive attributions held separately for Indian and American observers, for dark-and light-skinned faces, for faces with and without a pathogen cue (see Supplementary Materials for analyses on these subsamples). ...
Article
Full-text available
Along with a classical immune system, we have evolved a behavioral one which directs us away from potentially contagious individuals. Here I show, using publicly available cross-cultural data, that this adaptation is so fundamental that our first impressions of a male stranger are largely driven by the perceived health of his face. Positive (likeable, capable, intelligent, trustworthy) and negative (unfriendly, ignorant, lazy) first impressions are affected by facial health in adaptively different ways, inconsistent with a mere halo effect; they are also modulated by one’s current state of health and inclination to feel disgusted by pathogens. These findings, which replicated across two countries as different as the USA and India, suggest that instinctive perceptions of badness and goodness from faces are not two sides of the same coin but reflect the (nonsymmetrical) expected costs and benefits of interaction. Apparently, pathogens run the show—and first impressions come second.
... The symmetric multimodal model for dialog systems enables the ECAs to deliver and to understand input/output modes, including speech, gestures, and facial expressions. This makes the interfaces more familiar and trustworthy [38], where trustworthiness is one of the building blocks of patient compliance and responsiveness [65]. ...
Chapter
Full-text available
With spoken language interfaces, chatbots, and enablers, the conversational intelligence became an emerging field of research in man-machine interfaces in several target domains. In this paper, we introduce the multilingual conversational chatbot platform that integrates Open Health Connect platform and mHealth application together with multimodal services in order to deliver advanced 3D embodied conversational agents. The platform enables novel human-machine interaction with the cancer survivors in six different languages. The platform also integrates patients’ reported information as patients gather health data into digital clinical records. Further, the conversational agents have the potential to play a significant role in healthcare, from assistants during clinical consultations, to supporting positive behavior changes, or as assistants in living environments helping with daily tasks and activities.
... Another interesting line of future research would be to integrate our current findings on concrete facial features with findings on the effects of global facial typicality (e.g., Dotsch, Hassin, & Todorov, 2016;Sofer, Dotsch, Wigboldus, & Todorov, 2015). This related line of research showed that faces high in global typicality trigger more favorable evaluations and are perceived as more trustworthy. ...
... The "beautiful-is-good"-effect is one of the most robust and best-known effects in social psychology. Our work is in line with recent scholarship that highlighted a nuanced assessment regarding the psychological effects of facial beauty on observers (e.g., Han & Laurent, 2023;Sofer et al., 2015). A more ideal face (e.g., wrinkle-free and spotless skin, well-defined jawline, specific anthropometric proportions and symmetry) appears to be rewarded with higher attractiveness, but it may evoke less desirable character attributions in terms of lower morality and less trustworthiness at the same time. ...
Article
Full-text available
Mobile dating apps are popular platforms to initiate romantic relationships that provide several means for idealized self-presentation—such as the possibility to modify one's photos with the help of beauty filters. Connecting and extending prior theory and research, a model on the influence of filter use on potential dating partners' perceived trustworthiness and attractiveness is proposed. We conducted a pre-registered online experiment (N = 241), showing that (hetero- or bisexual) women perceive male Tinder users with filtered photos (as compared to the same users with unfiltered photos) as more physically attractive—but as less trustworthy. The more attractive and trustworthy the profile owner was perceived, the more likely the women were inclined to date him. Attractiveness had a greater influence on women's dating intention than trustworthiness, leading to a positive overall effect of filter use on dating intention, irrespective of photo-editing experience. Implications are discussed.
... In this experiment, participants reported deepfake images to be 'trustworthy' significantly more than real images: 4.82 as against 4.48 on a scale of 1 ('very untrustworthy') to 7 ('very trustworthy'). The study authors hypothesized that this difference was due to the deepfake faces looking more like average faces, which some research indicates tend to be more trustworthy [ 106 ]. However, it should be noted that while the effect (of 0.34) was statistically significant it is a tiny effect. ...
Article
Full-text available
‘Deepfakes’ are computationally created entities that falsely represent reality. They can take image, video, and audio modalities, and pose a threat to many areas of systems and societies, comprising a topic of interest to various aspects of cybersecurity and cybersafety. In 2020, a workshop consulting AI experts from academia, policing, government, the private sector, and state security agencies ranked deepfakes as the most serious AI threat. These experts noted that since fake material can propagate through many uncontrolled routes, changes in citizen behaviour may be the only effective defence. This study aims to assess human ability to identify image deepfakes of human faces (these being uncurated output from the StyleGAN2 algorithm as trained on the FFHQ dataset) from a pool of non-deepfake images (these being random selection of images from the FFHQ dataset), and to assess the effectiveness of some simple interventions intended to improve detection accuracy. Using an online survey, participants (N = 280) were randomly allocated to one of four groups: a control group, and three assistance interventions. Each participant was shown a sequence of 20 images randomly selected from a pool of 50 deepfake images of human faces and 50 images of real human faces. Participants were asked whether each image was AI-generated or not, to report their confidence, and to describe the reasoning behind each response. Overall detection accuracy was only just above chance and none of the interventions significantly improved this. Of equal concern was the fact that participants’ confidence in their answers was high and unrelated to accuracy. Assessing the results on a per-image basis reveals that participants consistently found certain images easy to label correctly and certain images difficult, but reported similarly high confidence regardless of the image. Thus, although participant accuracy was 62% overall, this accuracy across images ranged quite evenly between 85 and 30%, with an accuracy of below 50% for one in every five images. We interpret the findings as suggesting that there is a need for an urgent call to action to address this threat.
... Due to ambiguity in gender, for example, the face images used here do not allow to explore the role of facial gender differences, a key factor in social perception (Mileva et al., 2019;Oh, Dotsch et al., 2020;Sutherland et al., 2015). Specifically, "face trustworthiness" and attractiveness may have a nonlinear relationship for female faces (Sofer et al., 2015), and are more strongly correlated with each other for male than for female faces (Mileva et al., 2019). However, the computational approach described here is easily extendable to both hyper-realistic synthetic and real-life facial images (Peterson et al., 2022), overcoming these shortcomings of the present studies. ...
Article
Full-text available
Trustworthy-looking faces are also perceived as more attractive, but are there other meaningful cues that contribute to perceived trustworthiness? Using data-driven models, we identify these cues after removing attractiveness cues. In Experiment 1, we show that both judgments of trustworthiness and attractiveness of faces manipulated by a model of perceived trustworthiness change in the same direction. To control for the effect of attractiveness, we build two new models of perceived trustworthiness: a subtraction model, which forces the perceived attractiveness and trustworthiness to be negatively correlated (Experiment 2), and an orthogonal model, which reduces their correlation (Experiment 3). In both experiments, faces manipulated to appear more trustworthy were indeed perceived to be more trustworthy, but not more attractive. Importantly, in both experiments, these faces were also perceived as more approachable and with more positive expressions, as indicated by both judgments and machine learning algorithms. The current studies show that the visual cues used for trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments can be separated, and that apparent approachability and facial emotion are driving trustworthiness judgments and possibly general valence evaluation.
... A second limitation regards the relatively small range of facial trustworthiness values among stimuli. This range was beneficial because people react more positively to more average versus more unusual faces 64 . However, this benefit means that whether the described findings generalize to faces more starkly contrasted on trustworthiness is unclear. ...
Article
Full-text available
The affective polarization characteristic of the United States’ political climate contributes to pervasive intergroup tension. This tension polarizes basic aspects of person perception, such as face impressions. For instance, face impressions are polarized by partisanship disclosure such that people form positive and negative impressions of, respectively, shared and opposing partisan faces. How partisanship interacts with other facial cues affecting impressions remains unclear. Building on work showing that facial trustworthiness, a core dimension of face perception, is especially salient for ingroup members, we reasoned that shared and opposing partisanship may also affect the relation between facial trustworthiness characteristics and subsequent likability impressions. A stronger positive relation emerged for shared versus opposing partisan faces across more conservative and liberal perceivers (Experiments 1 and 2). Exploratory analyses showed that this difference links to perceived partisan threat (Experiment 1) and that experimentally manipulating inter-party threat strengthened opposing partisan derogation and shared partisan enhancement patterns (Experiment 2). These findings suggest that partisanship extends from affecting overall face impressions of partisans to affecting the relation between a core dimension of face perception and subsequent impressions. These findings highlight the prevalence of partisanship effects in basic aspects of person perception and have implications for intergroup behavior.
... Research showed that different factors can influence judgments of trustworthiness. For example, people judge a face as more trustworthy if it reflects the canons of the typical face: the more a face embodies typical features, the more reliable it is [36]. Other studies reported higher levels of trustworthiness when older faces (OFs) were evaluated compared to younger faces (YFs) [37]. ...
Article
Full-text available
The COVID-19 pandemic and the obligation to wear surgical face masks have affected social interactions. Wearing a mask can cause impairments in face identification, emotion recognition, and trait impressions. The present study investigated, during the COVID-19 period, age-related differences in perceived trustworthiness (Study 1) and health (Study 2) when viewing faces with or without masks. Younger (YAs, 18–35 years) and older (OAs, over 65 years) adults’ ratings were compared. Through a web-based platform, a series of neutral younger and older faces (YFs vs. OFs) were presented, on a computer screen, with or without a mask (Mask vs. No-Mask), and participants were asked to rate them on a 7-point scale. Furthermore, data collected during the pandemic (Mask and No-Mask conditions) were compared with ratings obtained before it (Pre-COVID condition). Perceived trustworthiness was lower in the No-Mask condition for both age groups compared to Mask and Pre-COVID conditions, which did not differ. For health ratings, no differences emerged for OAs between the conditions, whereas YAs’ ratings were lower in both the Mask and No-Mask conditions compared to the Pre-COVID condition. The fear of contracting COVID-19 affected both trustworthiness and health ratings. Wearing a surgical face mask affects trait impressions for YAs and OAs, partly due to the fear of COVID-19. Trait impressions are also influenced by the age of the face to be evaluated.
... Therefore, these stimuli would look more real because they are more similar to mental templates that people have built from instances of faces seen in everyday life. Although in general typical faces are assumed to be more attractive (Rhodes, 2006), it was recently shown that attractiveness ratings decreased for faces closer to the typical face (Sofer et al., 2015). However, attractiveness could only explain some of the variance in judgment; stimulus type alone (GAN vs REAL) could still explain judgment when attractiveness was held constant across our two stimulus types. ...
... In this experiment, participants reported deepfake images to be "trustworthy" significantly more than real images: 4.82 as against 4.48 on a scale of 1 ("very untrustworthy") to 7 ("very trustworthy"). The study authors hypothesised that this difference was due to the deepfake faces looking more like average faces, which some research indicates tend to be more trustworthy [106]. However, it should be noted that while the effect (of 0.34) was statistically significant it is a tiny effect. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Deepfakes are computationally-created entities that falsely represent reality. They can take image, video, and audio modalities, and pose a threat to many areas of systems and societies, comprising a topic of interest to various aspects of cybersecurity and cybersafety. In 2020 a workshop consulting AI experts from academia, policing, government, the private sector, and state security agencies ranked deepfakes as the most serious AI threat. These experts noted that since fake material can propagate through many uncontrolled routes, changes in citizen behaviour may be the only effective defence. This study aims to assess human ability to identify image deepfakes of human faces (StyleGAN2:FFHQ) from nondeepfake images (FFHQ), and to assess the effectiveness of simple interventions intended to improve detection accuracy. Using an online survey, 280 participants were randomly allocated to one of four groups: a control group, and 3 assistance interventions. Each participant was shown a sequence of 20 images randomly selected from a pool of 50 deepfake and 50 real images of human faces. Participants were asked if each image was AI-generated or not, to report their confidence, and to describe the reasoning behind each response. Overall detection accuracy was only just above chance and none of the interventions significantly improved this. Participants' confidence in their answers was high and unrelated to accuracy. Assessing the results on a per-image basis reveals participants consistently found certain images harder to label correctly, but reported similarly high confidence regardless of the image. Thus, although participant accuracy was 62% overall, this accuracy across images ranged quite evenly between 85% and 30%, with an accuracy of below 50% for one in every five images. We interpret the findings as suggesting that there is a need for an urgent call to action to address this threat.
... Therefore, these stimuli would look more real because they are more similar to mental templates that people have built from instances of faces seen in everyday life. Although in general typical faces are assumed to be more attractive (Rhodes, 2006), it was recently shown that attractiveness ratings decreased for faces closer to the typical face (Sofer et al., 2015). However, attractiveness could only explain some of the variance in judgment; stimulus type alone (GAN vs REAL) could still explain judgment when attractiveness was held constant across our two stimulus types. ...
Article
Full-text available
Today more than ever, we are asked to evaluate the realness, truthfulness and trustworthiness of our social world. Here, we focus on how people evaluate realistic-looking faces of non-existing people generated by generative adversarial networks (GANs). GANs are increasingly used in marketing, journalism, social media, and political propaganda. In three studies, we investigated if and how participants can distinguish between GAN and REAL faces and the social consequences of their exposure to artificial faces. GAN faces were more likely to be perceived as real than REAL faces, a pattern partly explained by intrinsic stimulus characteristics. Moreover, participants’ realness judgments influenced their behavior because they displayed increased social conformity toward faces perceived as real, independently of their actual realness. Lastly, knowledge about the presence of GAN faces eroded social trust. Our findings point to potentially far-reaching consequences for the pervasive use of GAN faces in a culture powered by images at unprecedented levels.
... Black faces were rated as slightly more trustworthy than South Asian faces, but otherwise there was no effect across race, but women (4.94) were rated as significantly more trustworthy than men (4.36). The authors hypothesized that synthetically generated faces are more trustworthy than real faces because synthesized faces tend to look more like average faces-an artifact of the GAN generation process-which themselves are deemed more trustworthy (Sofer et al. 2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
Synthetic media—so-called deep fakes—have captured the imagination of some and struck fear in others. Although they vary in their form and creation, deep fakes refer to text, image, audio, or video that has been automatically synthesized by a machine-learning system. Deep fakes are the latest in a long line of techniques used to manipulate reality, yet their introduction poses new opportunities and risks due to the democratized access to what would have historically been the purview of Hollywood-style studios. This review describes how synthetic media is created, how it is being used and misused, and if (and how) it can be perceptually and forensically distinguished from reality.
Article
It has been suggested that caricaturing enhances esthetic appeal, by making an image more strongly stimulate those areas of the brain encoding the subject's distinctive features than does the subject itself. However, some experimental work suggests that people prefer faces with proportions closer to average, or closer to a particular template. It might be that familiarity with the face is important if caricaturing is to increase the esthetic appeal of a likeness. Here we examined how automated caricaturing of photographs of nominal celebrities influenced judgments of esthetic appeal, and how familiarity with the celebrities affected these. Caricaturing monotonically decreased the esthetic appeal of the celebrity photographs, with subjects’ familiarity with the celebrity not influencing this relationship. The degree to which caricaturing influenced esthetic appeal was not correlated with judgments of relative spatial dimensions for a simple shape, either in a discrimination threshold experiment or a peak-shift experiment.
Article
An important development in the study of face impressions was the introduction of dominance and trustworthiness as the primary and potentially orthogonal traits judged from faces. We test competing predictions of recent accounts that address evidence against the independence of these judgements. To this end we develop a version of recent ‘deep models of face impressions’ better suited for data‐efficient experimental manipulation. In Study 1 ( N = 128) we build impression models using 15 times less ratings per dimension than previously assumed necessary. In Study 2 ( N = 234) we show how our method can precisely manipulate dominance and trustworthiness impressions of face photographs and observe how the effects' pattern of the cues of one trait on impressions of the other differs from previous accounts. We propose an altered account that stresses how a successful execution of the two judgements' functional roles requires impressions of trustworthiness and dominance to be based on cues of both traits. Finally we show our manipulation resulted in larger effect sizes using a broader array of features than previous methods. Our approach lets researchers manipulate face stimuli for various face perception studies and investigate new dimensions with minimal data collection.
Article
Mate choice, and sex differences in romantic behaviours, represented one of the first major applications of evolutionary biology to human behaviour. This paper reviews Darwinian approaches to heterosexual mate assessment based on physical characteristics, placing the literature in its historical context (1871-1979), before turning (predominantly) to psychological research on attractiveness judgements based on physical characteristics. Attractiveness is consistently inferred across multiple modalities, with biological theories explaining why we differentiate certain individuals, on average, from others. Simultaneously, it is a judgement that varies systematically in light of our own traits, environment, and experiences. Over 30 years of research has generated robust effects alongside reasons to be humble in our lack of understanding of the precise physiological mechanisms involved in mate assessment. This review concludes with three questions to focus attention in further research, and proposes that our romantic preferences still provide a critical window into the evolution of human sexuality.
Article
Full-text available
Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przedstawienie wpływu efektu aureoli na oceny czynów przestępczych, a także osób podejrzanych o ich popełnienie, oskarżonych, skazanych i ofiar, wydawane przez społeczeństwo oraz przedstawicieli instytucji odpowiedzialnych za reakcję na nie. Omówienie powyższej problematyki rozpoczęto od przybliżenia genezy, sposobu działania i właściwości prowadzących do wystąpienia omawianego błędu poznawczego w świetle aktualnej wiedzy psychologicznej. Następnie dokonano analizy badań dotyczących potencjalnych zniekształceń poznawczych w ocenie czynów przestępczych oraz karaniu. Część teoretyczna została zakończona opisem sugerowanych wytłumaczeń dla korzystania z czynników pozaprawnych w tym zakresie. Artykuł został ponadto wzbogacony o przeprowadzone studia przypadków trzech wybranych spraw kryminalnych, w stosunku do których można podejrzewać o wystąpieniu efektu aureoli. Stanowią je sprawy Camerona Coyle’a Herrina, Debry Jean Lafave oraz Magdaleny Renaty Kralki. The purpose of this article is to present the impact of the halo effect on the assessment of criminal acts, as well as suspects, defendants, convicts and victims, made by society and representatives of institutions responsible for responding to them. The discussion of the aforementioned issue began with outlining the origin, mechanisms of action and features leading to the emergence of the discussed cognitive error in the light of recent psychological knowledge. Thereafter, an analysis of research on potential cognitive misconceptions in the assessment of criminal acts and sentencing was carried out. The theoretical part was concluded with a description of proposed explanations of the use of non-legal factors in submitted scope. The article was also enriched by the case studies conducted on three selected criminal cases regarding to which it may be suspected that the halo effect occurred. These are the cases of Cameron Coyle Herrin, Debra Jean Lafave and Magdalena Renata Kralka.
Preprint
Full-text available
Humans regularly judge others’ character, including how trustworthy or dominant they are, based on facial appearance. Current models propose that specific facial features drive these judgments, but they are based predominantly on White faces. Here, we show that face ethnicity alters the features that drive trustworthiness and dominance judgments, highlighting the limited generalizability of current models. Using ethnically diverse faces and a powerful data-driven method, we modelled the 3D facial features that drive these key social trait judgments from Black African, East Asian, and White European faces in 60 individual White Western observers. Trustworthiness judgments are driven by a shared set of features plus those that exaggerate or diminish ethno-phenotypic features. Dominance judgments also rely on shared features plus those that exaggerate or diminish signal strength. Our results have direct implications for current theories of social perception and emphasize and the importance of representing ethnic diversity in psychological models.
Article
We report on an experimental study that explores cross-cultural differences in perception of trustworthiness based on facial traits. In the first part of the experiment, individual male and female neutral photographs of Buryats (Mongolian people of Eastern Siberia) were rated on trustworthiness by men and women from the same population. The trustworthy-looking facial traits were investigated by means of geometric morphometrics, and analysis of the facial action units using artificial neural network (FaceReader). Significant associations between facial traits and perceived trustworthiness were revealed only for male photographs rated by men. Facial shape pattern along trustworthy–untrustworthy vector corresponded to the facial femininity-masculinity vector for Buryats, as well as to the positive-negative vector of the emotional connotation of the neutral facial shape. “Untrustworthy” facial shape was characterized by relatively narrower lower jaw, lower set eyebrows, as well as a lower position of the “Brow Lowerer” facial action unit—a frown. In the second part of the experiment, two geometric morphometric morphs, representing “trustworthy” and “untrustworthy” Buryat male facial shapes, were judged on trustworthiness by male representatives of Buryat, Tuvan (Mongolian people of Southern Siberia), Russian, Indian, and East African (Tanzanians) cultures. The results revealed that in all studied samples the “trustworthy” male portrait was rated significantly higher on trustworthiness than “untrustworthy” one. However, perceived trustworthiness, and agreement of portrait judgments with those of Buryats significantly declined with geographic and genetic distance between populations.
Article
Aim. To examine the opinion of patients and nurses about professional appearance in nursing in relation to gender and age and to examine how they perceive professionalism. Methods. Respondents in the cross-sectional study were nurses and patients. An anonymous questionnaire created for the purpose of this research was used to collect data. Results. A total number of 764 respondents participated in the research. Male respondents show significantly more agreement with the statement that the physical appearance of the female nurse (p=0.003) / male nurse (p=0.005) affects the satisfaction with the health care provided. Respondents of older age groups show significantly more agreement with the statement that a female nurse dressed in a skimpier uniform will attract the attention of male patients and that during working hours she should cover the tattoo/piercing, unlike younger respondents. Compared to medical workers, patients show significantly more agreement with the statement that the physical appearance of female nurses is not related to their expertise (p=0.001), and that they would feel more comfortable if they were taken care of by a female nurse that is properly dressed (p=0.05). Both female and male nurses show significantly more agreement with the statement that the uniform should not put them in an uncomfortable situation (p=0.004). Conclusion. Most respondents believe that both female and male nurses should be properly dressed in the workplace and respect the provisions of professional appearance.
Article
Marketers and policymakers use advertising visuals to motivate prosocial behavior, whereby visual attractiveness influences people's empathy and thus their prosocial decisions. In the charity context, various donor‐related factors, including external circumstances and environments in which donors find themselves, can determine the impact of visual attractiveness. In two studies, this research investigates how and why donors responded to attractive/unattractive charitable images during the universal hardship of the COVID‐19 pandemic. In the first study, field data from a charity platform reveal how visual aesthetics affected donations before and during the pandemic. In the second study, a laboratory experiment examines empathy as a mediator of the relationship between visual attractiveness and charitable purchase intentions before and during the pandemic. During the pandemic, unattractive visuals generated significantly greater empathy than attractive visuals, and empathy drove donations and purchase intentions for charitable goods. That is, the “ugliness premium” dominated the “beauty premium” during the pandemic. Our findings that natural disasters or crises moderate observers' preferences for visual attractiveness or unattractiveness offer meaningful insights for applying visual aesthetics to charity advertising designs.
Article
Social context has been shown to influence pain perception. This study aimed to broaden this literature by investigating whether relevant social stimuli such as faces with different level of intrinsic (based on physical resemblance to known individuals) and episodic (acquired through a previous experience) familiarity may lead to hypoalgesia. We hypothesized that familiarity, whether intrinsic or acquired through experience, would increase pain threshold and decrease pain intensity. Sixty-seven participants underwent pain induction (the cold pressor test) viewing previously seen faces (episodic group) or new faces (non-episodic group) that differed in level of intrinsic familiarity (high vs. low). Pain threshold was measured in seconds, while pain intensity was measured on a rating scale of 0-10. The results did not show an effect of episodic familiarity. However, compared to low, high intrinsic familiar faces had an attenuating effect on pain intensity, even after controlling for pain expectation. These results suggest that physical features conveying a higher feeling of familiarity induce a top-down hypoalgesic modulation, in line with the idea that familiarity may signal safety and that the presence of familiar others reduces perceived threat-related distress. This study provides further evidence on social modulation of pain and contributes to the literature on first impressions influence on social behavior. PERSPECTIVE: Consistent with the idea that familiar others signal safety and reduce the sense of threat, facial features conveying familiarity induce a top-down hypoalgesic modulation. This knowledge may contribute to understanding differences in pain perception in experimental and clinical contexts.
Article
Full-text available
By utilizing statistical properties and summary statistics, the visual system can efficiently integrate perception of spatially and temporally adjacent stimuli into perception of a given target. For instance, perception of a target face can either be biased positively toward previous faces (e.g. the serial dependence effect) or be biased negatively by surrounding faces in the same trial/space (e.g. spatial ensemble averaging). However, both aspects were investigated separately. As spatial and temporal processing share the same purpose to reduce redundancy in visual processing, if one statistical processing occurs, would the statistical processing in the other domain still exist or be discarded? We investigated this question by exploring whether serial dependence of face perception (of attractiveness and averageness) survives when the changed face perception in the group context occurs. The results of Markov Chain modeling and conventional methods suggested that serial dependence (the temporal aspect) co-occurs with changed face perception in the group context (the spatial aspect). We also utilized the Hidden Markov modeling, as a new mathematical method, to model statistical processing from both domains. The results confirmed the co-occurrence of temporal effect and changed face perception in the group context for both attractiveness and averageness, suggesting potentially different spatial and temporal compression mechanisms in high-level vision. Further modeling and cluster analysis further revealed that the detailed computation of spatially and temporally adjacent faces in the attractiveness and averageness processing were similar yet different among different individuals. This work builds a bridge to understanding mathematical principles underlying changed face perception in the group context from the serial perspective.
Article
Face perception and recognition are important processes for social interaction and communication among humans, so understanding how faces are mentally represented and processed has major implications. At the same time, faces are just some of the many stimuli that we encounter in our everyday lives. Therefore, more general theories of how we represent objects might also apply to faces. Contemporary research on the mental representation of faces has centered on two competing theoretical frameworks that arose from more general categorization research: prototype-based face representation and exemplar-based face representation. Empirically distinguishing between these frameworks is difficult and neither one has been ruled out. In this paper, we advance this area of research in three ways. First, we introduce two additional frameworks for mental representation of categories, varying abstraction and ideal representation, which have not been applied to face perception and recognition before. Second, we fit formal computational models of all four of these theories to human perceptual judgments of the typicality and attractiveness (a strong correlate of typicality) of 100 young adult Caucasian female faces, with the models expressed within a face space derived from facial similarity judgments via multidimensional scaling. Third, we predict the perceived typicality and attractiveness of the faces using these models and compare the predictive performance of each to the empirical data. We found that of all four models, the ideal representation model provided the best account of perceived typicality and attractiveness for the present set of faces, although all models showed discrepancies from the empirical data. These findings demonstrate the relevance of mental categorization processes for representing faces.
Article
Full-text available
Social face evaluation is a common and consequential element of everyday life based on the judgement of trustworthiness. However, the particular facial regions that guide such trustworthiness judgements are largely unknown. It is also unclear whether different facial regions are consistently utilized to guide judgments for different ethnic groups, and whether previous exposure to specific ethnicities in one’s social environment has an influence on trustworthiness judgements made from faces or facial regions. This registered report addressed these questions through a global online survey study that recruited Asian, Black, Latino, and White raters (N = 4580). Raters were shown full faces and specific parts of the face for an ethnically diverse, sex-balanced set of 32 targets and rated targets’ trustworthiness. Multilevel modelling showed that in forming trustworthiness judgements, raters relied most strongly on the eyes (with no substantial information loss vis-à-vis full faces). Corroborating ingroup–outgroup effects, raters rated faces and facial parts of targets with whom they shared their ethnicity, sex, or eye color as significantly more trustworthy. Exposure to ethnic groups in raters’ social environment predicted trustworthiness ratings of other ethnic groups in nuanced ways. That is, raters from the ambient ethnic majority provided slightly higher trustworthiness ratings for stimuli of their own ethnicity compared to minority ethnicities. In contrast, raters from an ambient ethnic minority (e.g., immigrants) provided substantially lower trustworthiness ratings for stimuli of the ethnic majority. Taken together, the current study provides a new window into the psychological processes underlying social face evaluation and its cultural generalizability. Protocol registration The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 7 January 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.18319244.
Article
Crowdsourced evaluation of facial averageness and attractiveness¹ is a recently introduced online method in the field of aesthetic plastic surgery.2,3 The authors employed this method to verify whether composite-averaged faces are perceived as the most attractive. Their ultimate goal is to use composite images as a framework to compare postoperative results. Although beauty has long been considered highly subjective, our preferences and decision-making processes are neural processes that fall within the realm of scientific investigation.4–6 The authors’ conclusions accord with the well-accepted neuroscience finding that a composite face is preferred over the individual faces from which the composite is generated. This holds true regardless of gender, age, or geographic background.⁷ THE NECESSITY OF MODELS FOR EACH ETHNIC GROUP The authors acknowledge they were not able to investigate the aesthetic ideals of various ethnic groups because their composite consisted only of Caucasians. The goal is not to establish strict measures by which beauty is defined, as proponents of the golden proportion propose. Beauty is too vast to be contained in a number or a mathematical formula. The objective is to establish references for each ethnic group with a sufficiently wide margin that encompasses the plurality of the nature of beauty.
Article
Full-text available
Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributing social and personality characteristics from facial appearance. Recent studies have shown that surprisingly little time and effort are needed to arrive at this consensus. Here we review recent research on social attributions from faces. Section I outlines data-driven methods capable of identifying the perceptual basis of consensus in social attributions from faces (e.g., What makes a face look threatening?). Section II describes nonperceptual determinants of social attributions (e.g., person knowledge and incidental associations). Section III discusses evidence that attributions from faces predict important social outcomes in diverse domains (e.g., investment decisions and leader selection). In Section IV, we argue that the diagnostic validity of these attributions has been greatly overstated in the literature. In the final section, we offer an account of the functional significance of these attributions. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 66 is November 30, 2014. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pubdates.aspx for revised estimates.
Article
Full-text available
People rapidly form impressions from facial appearance, and these impressions affect social decisions. We argue that data-driven, computational models are the best available tools for identifying the source of such impressions. Here we validate seven computational models of social judgments of faces: attractiveness, competence, dominance, extroversion, likability, threat, and trustworthiness. The models manipulate both face shape and reflectance (i.e., cues such as pigmentation and skin smoothness). We show that human judgments track the models' predictions (Experiment 1) and that the models differentiate between different judgments, though this differentiation is constrained by the similarity of the models (Experiment 2). We also make the validated stimuli available for academic research: seven databases containing 25 identities manipulated in the respective model to take on seven different dimension values, ranging from -3 SD to +3 SD (175 stimuli in each database). Finally, we show how the computational models can be used to control for shared variance of the models. For example, even for highly correlated dimensions (e.g., dominance and threat), we can identify cues specific to each dimension and, consequently, generate faces that vary only on these cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Article
Full-text available
Aesthetic preference is hypothetically a positive function of the degree to which the mental representation (REP) of a stimulus is activated. Because more typical stimuli are coded by mental REP capable of greater activation, preference should be positively related to prototypicality. This was the case in 5 experiments on color preference. Successive hedonic contrast can be viewed as a form of priming. A color prime laterally inhibits REPs of similar hues but also indirectly activates them through the cognitive unit that codes the superordinate color category. Preference for one of these hues will be increased or decreased, depending on whether the net effect of priming was activation or inhibition. Several experiments showed that typicality of the prime and the prime's relatedness to the target—rather than preference for the prime—determine preference for target stimuli: Less preferred primes can decrease as well as increase preference for more preferred targets of the same hue. Category-name primes increase preference for prototypical colors and decrease preference for nonprototypical colors because the net results of such priming are activation of REPs of prototypes and inhibition of REPs of nonprototypes. A mathematical model of hedonic contrast offers a good description of the data from the priming experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Article
Full-text available
Why do some faces appear more similar than others? Beyond structural factors, we speculate that similarity is governed by the organization of faces located in a multi-dimensional face space. To test this hypothesis, we morphed a typical face with an atypical face. If similarity judgments are guided purely by their physical properties, the morph should be perceived to be equally similar to its typical parent as its atypical parent. However, contrary to the structural prediction, our results showed that the morph face was perceived to be more similar to the atypical face than the typical face. Our empirical studies show that the atypicality bias is not limited to faces, but extends to other object categories (birds) whose members share common shape properties. We also demonstrate atypicality bias is malleable and can change subject to category learning and experience. Collectively, the empirical evidence indicates that perceptions of face and object similarity are affected by the distribution of stimuli in a face or object space. In this framework, atypical stimuli are located in a sparser region of the space where there is less competition for recognition and therefore, these representations capture a broader range of inputs. In contrast, typical stimuli are located in a denser region of category space where there is increased competition for recognition and hence, these representation draw a more restricted range of face inputs. These results suggest that the perceived likeness of an object is influenced by the organization of surrounding exemplars in the category space.
Article
Full-text available
We examined context-free familiarity information as a source of the effects of face typicality upon face recognition. Experiment 1 tested memory for typical and unusual faces by (1) subjects who received an input list followed immediately by a recognition test (standard condition), (2) subjects who viewed all test faces (targets and lures) prior to the input list (prefamiliarization condition), and (3) subjects who viewed all test faces after the input list but prior to recognition (postfamiliarization condition). Although false-alarm errors in the standard condition were lower for unusual than for typical faces, this effect was reduced by postfamiliarization and was eliminated entirely by prefamiliarization. The prefamiliarization and typicality effects were replicated in Experiment 2, which showed that patterns of old judgments were compatible with the hypothesis that, although familiarity of new faces is greater if these faces are typical, the increment in familiarity that results from presentation is greater if these faces are unusual.
Article
Full-text available
Within-subject ANOVAs are a powerful tool to analyze data because the variance associated to differences between the participants is removed from the analysis. Hence, small differences, when present for most of the participants, can be significant even when the participants are very different from one another. Yet, graphs showing standard error or confidence interval bars are misleading since these bars include the between-subject variability. Loftus and Masson (1994) noticed this fact and proposed an alternate method to compute the error bars. However, i) their approach requires that the ANOVA be performed first, which is paradoxical since a graph is an aid to decide whether to perform analyses or not; ii) their method provides a single error bar for all the conditions, masking information such as the heterogeneity of variances across conditions; iii) the method proposed is difficult to implement in commonly-used graphing software. Here we propose a simpler alternative and show how it can be implemented in SPSS.
Article
Full-text available
People automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions, and these evaluations predict important social outcomes, ranging from electoral success to sentencing decisions. Based on behavioral studies and computer modeling, we develop a 2D model of face evaluation. First, using a principal components analysis of trait judgments of emotionally neutral faces, we identify two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, that are sufficient to describe face evaluation and show that these dimensions can be approximated by judgments of trustworthiness and dominance. Second, using a data-driven statistical model for face representation, we build and validate models for representing face trustworthiness and face dominance. Third, using these models, we show that, whereas valence evaluation is more sensitive to features resembling expressions signaling whether the person should be avoided or approached, dominance evaluation is more sensitive to features signaling physical strength/weakness. Fourth, we show that important social judgments, such as threat, can be reproduced as a function of the two orthogonal dimensions of valence and dominance. The findings suggest that face evaluation involves an overgeneralization of adaptive mechanisms for inferring harmful intentions and the ability to cause harm and can account for rapid, yet not necessarily accurate, judgments from faces.
Article
Full-text available
A framework is outlined in which individual faces are assumed to be encoded as a point in a multidimensional space, defined by dimensions that serve to discriminate faces. It is proposed that such a framework can account for the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race on recognition of faces. Two specific models within this framework are identified: a norm-based coding model, in which faces are encoded as vectors from a population norm or prototype, and a purely exemplar-based model. Both models make similar predictions, albeit in different ways, concerning the interactions between the effects of distinctiveness, inversion and race. These predictions were supported in five experiments in which photographs of faces served as stimuli. The norm-based coding version and the exemplar-based version of the framework cannot be distinguished on the basis of the experiments reported, but it is argued that a multidimensional space provides a useful heuristic framework to investigate recognition of faces. Finally, the relationship between the specific models is considered and an implementation in terms of parallel distributed processing is briefly discussed.
Article
Full-text available
The finding that photographic and digital composites (blends) of faces are considered to be attractive has led to the claim that attractiveness is averageness. This would encourage stabilizing selection, favouring phenotypes with an average facial structure. The 'averageness hypothesis' would account for the low distinctiveness of attractive faces but is difficult to reconcile with the finding that some facial measurements correlate with attractiveness. An average face shape is attractive but may not be optimally attractive. Human preferences may exert directional selection pressures, as with the phenomena of optimal outbreeding and sexual selection for extreme characteristics. Using composite faces, we show here that, contrary to the averageness hypothesis, the mean shape of a set of attractive faces is preferred to the mean shape of the sample from which the faces were selected. In addition, attractive composites can be made more attractive by exaggerating the shape differences from the sample mean. Japanese and caucasian observers showed the same direction of preferences for the same facial composites, suggesting that aesthetic judgements of face shape are similar across different cultural backgrounds. Our finding that highly attractive facial configurations are not average shows that preferences could exert a directional selection pressure on the evolution of human face shape.
Article
Full-text available
Average faces are attractive. We sought to distinguish whether this preference is an adaptation for finding high-quality mates (the direct selection account) or whether it reflects more general information-processing mechanisms. In three experiments, we examined the attractiveness of birds, fish, and automobiles whose averageness had been manipulated using digital image manipulation techniques common in research on facial attractiveness. Both manipulated averageness and rated averageness were strongly associated with attractiveness in all three stimulus categories. In addition, for birds and fish, but not for automobiles, the correlation between subjective averageness and attractiveness remained significant when the effect of subjective familiarity was partialled out. The results suggest that at least two mechanisms contribute to the attractiveness of average exemplars. One is a general preference for familiar stimuli, which contributes to the appeal of averageness in all three categories. The other is a preference for averageness per se, which was found for birds and fish, but not for automobiles, and may reflect a preference for features signaling genetic quality in living organisms, including conspecifics.
Article
Full-text available
Although the averageness hypothesis of facial attractiveness proposes that the attractiveness of faces is mostly a consequence of their averageness, 1 study has shown that caricaturing highly attractive faces makes them mathematically less average but more attractive. Here the authors systematically test the averageness hypothesis in 5 experiments using both rating and visual adaptation paradigms. Visual adaptation has previously been shown to increase both preferences for previously viewed face types (i.e., attractiveness) and their perceived normality (i.e., averageness). The authors used a visual adaptation procedure to test whether facial attractiveness is dependent upon faces' proximity to average (averageness hypothesis) or their location relative to average along an attractiveness dimension in face space (contrast hypothesis). While the typical pattern of change due to visual adaptation was found for judgments of normality, judgments of attractiveness resulted in a very different pattern. The results of these 5 experiments conclusively support the proposal that there are specific nonaverage characteristics that are particularly attractive. The authors discuss important implications for the interpretation of studies using a visual adaptation paradigm to investigate attractiveness.
Article
Full-text available
Transforming facial images along perceived dimensions (such as age, gender, race, or health) has application in areas as diverse as psychology, medicine, and forensics. We can use prototype images to define the salient features of a particular face classification (for example, European female adult or East-Asian male child). We then use the differences between two prototypes to define an axis of transformation, such as younger to older. By applying these changes to a given input face, we can change its apparent age, race, or gender. Psychological investigations reveal a limitation with existing methods that's particularly apparent when changing the age of faces. We relate the problem to the loss of facial textures (such as stubble and wrinkles) in the prototypes due to the blending process. We review the existing face prototyping and transformation methods and present a new, wavelet-based method for prototyping and transforming facial textures
Article
Aesthetic preference is hypothetically a positive function of the degree to which the mental representation of a stimulus is activated. Because more typical stimuli are coded by mental representations capable of greater activation, preference should be positively related to prototypicality. We found this to be the case in five experiments on color preference. Successive hedonic contrast can be viewed as a form of priming. A color prime laterally inhibits representations of similar hues but also indirectly activates them through the cognitive unit that codes the superordinate color category. Preference for one of these hues will be increased or decreased, depending on whether the net effect of priming was activation or inhibition. Several experiments showed that typicality of the prime and the prime's relatedness to the target-rather than preference for the prime-determine preference for target stimuli: Less preferred primes can decrease as well as increase preference for more preferred targets of the same hue. Category-name primes increase preference for prototypical colors and decrease preference for nonprototypical colors because the net results of such priming are activation of representations of prototypes and inhibition of representations of nonprototypes. A mathematical model of hedonic contrast is developed and shown to provide a good description of the data from the priming experiments.
Article
Langlois and her colleagues reported in this journal that composite faces are more attractive than the component faces used to create them, and conjectured that averageness is attractive (Langlois & Roggman, 1990; Langlois, Roggman, & Musselman, 1994). However, extremes may also be attractive (Perrett, May, & Yoshikawa, 1994). We investigated the effect of averageness (proximity to a norm or average face) on attractiveness using a computerized caricature generator to vary averageness. Attractiveness increased with averageness (Experiment 1) and was negatively correlated with distinctiveness, a subjective measure of the converse of averageness (Experiments 1 and 2). Extremes (caricatures) were not attractive. Line-drawing composites, which avoid some of the problems associated with gray-level composites, were significantly more attractive and less distinctive (more average) than individual faces (Experiment 2). These results support the claim that averageness is attractive.
Article
A statistically average or prototypical member of a category (e.g., human faces) is often perceived as more attractive than less typical category members. Two experiments explored to what extent this may hold for music performance, an artistic domain in which individuality (i.e., deviation from prototypicality) is highly valued. In Experiment 1, graduate student pianists judged 11 student performances of Schumann's "Traumerei," one of which was created by forming the mathematical average of the other 10. The average performance was rated second highest in quality, even though it was judged second lowest in individuality. In Experiment 2, pianists judged 30 performances of the beginning of Chopin's Etude in E major, synthesized so as to vary only in expressive timing and tempo. The timing patterns were derived from expert pianists' recordings and from casual student performances, and they included separate and combined averages. All three averages received high quality ratings, and the expert average was rated highest of all 30 performances. There was a negative linear correlation between rated quality and individuality. Paradoxically, therefore, the students' expressive timing patterns were preferred over the experts'. Possible explanations of this finding are discussed, such as interactions between timing and other performance parameters and conditions under which conventionality tends to be favored over individuality.
Article
The familiar face overgeneralization hypothesis holds that an own-race positivity bias is, in part, a perceptual by-product of reactions to familiar people versus unfamiliar-looking strangers. Because prototypical facial structure varies across racial groups and communities are often racially segregated, strangers from one's own racial group should appear more familiar than strangers from a different racial group, contributing to ingroup favoritism and negative outgroup stereotypes. As predicted, the lower familiarity of own- than other-race faces mediated Koreans' and White Americans' ingroup favoritism in Study 1 and Black and White Americans' ingroup favoritism in Study 2. Lower familiarity of other-race faces also mediated negative stereotypes of other-race faces and partially suppressed positive ones, with familiarity effects confined to affectively valenced stereotypes. The results suggest that the unfamiliarity of other-race faces contributes not only to ingroup favoritism but also to a dual-process stereotyping in which both cultural beliefs and negative affective reactions to unfamiliarity make a contribution.
Article
A misattribution explanation for the mere exposure effect posits that individuals misattribute perceptual fluency to liking when they are not aware that the fluency comes from prior exposure. The uncertainty reduction explanation posits that individuals prefer stimuli that are familiar and is consistent with findings that stimuli judged old were preferred to those judged new. The present research provides evidence to support an uncertainty reduction account of the mere exposure effect. The results of Experiment 1 show that three different operationalizations of uncertainty reduction—prior exposure, subjective familiarity, and confidence—all led to enhanced affect. The results in Experiment 2 show that participants corrected their cognitive responses but not their affective responses at higher levels of exposure frequency, suggesting that misattribution may be accountable for exposure effects in cognitive judgments but not in affective judgments.
Article
We reported in this journal (Langlois & Roggman, 1990) findings showing that attractive faces are those that represent the mathematical average of faces in a population These findings were intriguing because they provided a parsimonious definition of facial attractiveness and because they supported explanations of attractiveness from the point of view of both evolutionary and cognitive-prototype theory Since our 1990 report, several alternative explanations of our findings have been offered In this article, we show that none of these alternatives explains our results adequately
Article
Scientists and philosophers have searched for centuries for a parsimonious answer to the question of what constitutes beauty. We approached this problem from both an evolutionary and information-processing rationale and predicted that faces representing the average value of the population would be consistently judged as attractive. To evaluate this hypothesis, we digitized samples of male and female faces, mathematically averaged them, and had adults judge the attractiveness of both the individual faces and the computer-generated composite images. Both male (three samples) and female (three samples) composite faces were judged as more attractive than almost all the individual faces comprising the composites. A strong linear trend also revealed that the composite faces became more attractive as more faces were entered. These data showing that attractive faces are only average are consistent with evolutionary pressures that favor characteristics close to the mean of the population and with cognitive processes that favor prototypical category members.
Article
Many animals find extreme versions of secondary sexual characteristics attractive, and such preferences can enhance reproductive success (Andersson, 1994). We hypothesized, therefore, that extreme versions of sex-typical traits may be attractive in human faces. We created supermale and superfemale faces by exaggerating all spatial differences between an average male and an average female face. In Expt 1 the male average was preferred to a supermale (50% exaggeration of differences from the female average). There was no clear preference for the female average or the superfemale (50% exaggeration). In Expt 2, participants chose the most attractive face from sets of images containing feminized as well as masculinized images for each sex, and spanning a wider range of exaggeration levels than in Expt 1. Chinese sets were also shown, to see whether similar preferences would occur for a less familiar race (participants were Caucasian). The most attractive female image was significantly feminized for faces of both races. However, the most attractive male image for both races was also significantly feminized. These results indicate that feminization, rather than sex exaggeration per se, is attractive in human faces, and they corroborate similar findings by Perrett et al. (1998).
Chapter
SINCE the publication of my work on Hereditary Genius in 1869, I have written numerous memoirs, of which a list is given in an earlier page, and which are scattered in various publications. They may have appeared desultory when read in the order in which they appeared, but as they had an underlying connection it seems worth while to bring their substance together in logical sequence into a single volume. I have revised, condensed, largely re-written, transposed old matter, and interpolated much that is new; but traces of the fragmentary origin, of the work still remain, and I do not regret them. They serve to show that the book is intended. to be suggestive, and renounces all claim to be encyclopedic.. I have indeed, with that object, avoided going into details. in not a few cases where I should otherwise have written with fulness, especially in the Anthropometric part. My general object has been to take note of the varied hereditary faculties of different men, and of the great differences in different families and races, to learn how far history may have shown the practicability of supplanting inefficient human stock by better strains, and to consider whether it might not be our duty to do so by such efforts as may be reasonable, thus exerting ourselves to further the ends of evolution more rapidly and with less distress than if events were left to their own course. The subject is, however, so entangled with collateral considerations that a straightforward step-by-step inquiry did not seem to be the most suitable course. I thought it safer to proceed like the surveyor of a new country, and endeavour to fix in the first instance as truly as I could the position of several cardinal points. The general outline of the results to which I finally arrived became more coherent and clear as this process went on;. they are briefly summarised in the concluding chapter.
Article
Previous research has identified facial averageness and sexual dimorphism as important factors in facial attractiveness. The averageness and sexual dimorphism accounts provide important first steps in understanding what makes faces attractive, and should be valued for their parsimony. However, we show that they explain relatively little of the variance in facial attractiveness, particularly for male faces. As an alternative to these accounts, we built a regression model that defines attractiveness as a function of a face's position in a multidimensional face space. The model provides much more predictive power than the averageness and sexual dimorphism accounts and reveals previously unreported components of attractiveness. The model shows that averageness is attractive in some dimensions but not in others and resolves previous contradictory reports about the effects of sexual dimorphism on the attractiveness of male faces.
Article
While much developmental research has focused on the strategies that children employ to recognize faces, less is known about the principles governing the organization of face exemplars in perceptual memory. In this study, we tested a novel, child-friendly paradigm for investigating the organization of face, bird and car exemplars. Children ages 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-12 and adults were presented with 50/50 morphs of typical and atypical face, bird and car parent images. Participants were asked to judge whether the 50/50 morph more strongly resembled the typical or the atypical parent image. Young and older children and adults showed a systematic bias to the atypical faces and birds, but no bias toward the atypical cars. Collectively, these findings argue that by the age of 3, children encode and organize faces, birds and cars in a perceptual space that is strikingly similar to that of adults. Category organization for both children and adults follows Krumhansl's (1978) distance-density principle in which the similarity between two exemplars is jointly determined by their physical appearance and the density of neighboring exemplars in the perceptual space.
Article
The amygdala is thought to perform a number of social functions, and has received much attention for its role in processing social properties of faces. In particular, it has been shown to respond more to facial expressions than to neutral faces, and more to positively valenced and negatively valenced faces than faces in the middle of the continuum. However, when these findings are viewed in the context of a multidimensional face space, an important question emerges. Face space is a vector space where every face can be represented as a point in the space. The origin of the space represents the average face. In this context, positively valenced and negatively valenced faces are further away from the average face than faces in the middle of the continuum. It is therefore unclear if the amygdala response to positively valenced and negatively valenced faces is due to their social properties or to their general distance from the average face. Here, we compared the amygdala response to a set of faces that varied along two dimensions centered around the average face but differing in social content. In both the amygdala and much of the posterior face network, we observed a similar response to both dimensions, with stronger responses to the extremes of the dimensions than to faces near the average face. These findings suggest that the responses in these regions to socially relevant faces may be partially due to general distance from the average face.
Article
We form first impressions from faces despite warnings not to do so. Moreover, there is considerable agreement in our impressions, which carry significant social outcomes. Appearance matters because some facial qualities are so useful in guiding adaptive behavior that even a trace of those qualities can create an impression. Specifically, the qualities revealed by facial cues that characterize low fitness, babies, emotion, and identity are overgeneralized to people whose facial appearance resembles the unfit (anomalous face overgeneralization), babies (babyface overgeneralization), a particular emotion (emotion face overgeneralization), or a particular identity (familiar face overgeneralization). We review studies that support the overgeneralization hypotheses and recommend research that incorporates additional tenets of the ecological theory from which these hypotheses are derived: the contribution of dynamic and multi-modal stimulus information to face perception; bidirectional relationships between behavior and face perception; perceptual learning mechanisms and social goals that sensitize perceivers to particular information in faces.
Article
S. Brennan (1985, Leonardo, 18, 170–178) has developed a computer-implemented caricature generator based on a holistic theory of caricature. A face is represented by 37 lines, based on a fixed set of 169 points. Caricatures are produced by exaggerating all metric differences between a face and a norm. Anticaricatures can be created by reducing all the differences between a face and a norm. Caricatures of familiar faces were identified more quickly than veridical line drawings, which were identified more quickly than anticaricatures. There was no difference in identification accuracy for the three types of representation. The best likeness was considered to be a caricature. We discuss the implications of these results for how faces are mentally represented. The results are consistent with a holistic theory of encoding in which distinctive aspects of a face are represented by comparison with a norm. We suggest that this theory may be appropriate for classes of visual stimuli, other than faces, whose members share a configuration definable by a fixed set of points.
Article
What makes a face attractive and why do we have the preferences we do? Emergence of preferences early in development and cross-cultural agreement on attractiveness challenge a long-held view that our preferences reflect arbitrary standards of beauty set by cultures. Averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphism are good candidates for biologically based standards of beauty. A critical review and meta-analyses indicate that all three are attractive in both male and female faces and across cultures. Theorists have proposed that face preferences may be adaptations for mate choice because attractive traits signal important aspects of mate quality, such as health. Others have argued that they may simply be by-products of the way brains process information. Although often presented as alternatives, I argue that both kinds of selection pressures may have shaped our perceptions of facial beauty.
Article
Attractiveness is a facial attribute that shapes human affiliative behaviours. In a previous study we reported a linear response to facial attractiveness in orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a region involved in reward processing. There are strong theoretical grounds for the hypothesis that coding stimulus reward value also involves the amygdala. The aim of the present investigation is to address whether the amygdala is also sensitive to reward value in faces, indexed as facial attractiveness. We hypothesized that contrary to the linear effects reported previously in OFC, the amygdala would show a non-linear effect of attractiveness by responding to both high and low attractive faces relative to middle attractive faces. Such a non-linear response would explain previous failures to report an amygdala response to attractiveness. Human subjects underwent fMRI while they were presented with faces that varied in facial attractiveness where the task was either to rate faces for facial attractiveness or for age. Consistent with our hypothesis, right amygdala showed a predicted non-linear response profile with greater responses to highly attractive and unattractive faces compared to middle-ranked faces, independent of task. Distinct patterns of activity were seen across different regions of OFC, with some sectors showing linear effects of attractiveness, others exhibiting a non-linear response profile and still others demonstrating activation only during age judgments. Significant effects were also seen in medial prefrontal and paracingulate cortices, posterior OFC, insula, and superior temporal sulcus during explicit attractiveness judgments. The non-linear response profile of the amygdala is consistent with a role in sensing the value of social stimuli, a function that may also involve specific sectors of the OFC.
Article
People routinely make various trait judgments from facial appearance, and such judgments affect important social outcomes. These judgments are highly correlated with each other, reflecting the fact that valence evaluation permeates trait judgments from faces. Trustworthiness judgments best approximate this evaluation, consistent with evidence about the involvement of the amygdala in the implicit evaluation of face trustworthiness. Based on computer modeling and behavioral experiments, I argue that face evaluation is an extension of functionally adaptive systems for understanding the communicative meaning of emotional expressions. Specifically, in the absence of diagnostic emotional cues, trustworthiness judgments are an attempt to infer behavioral intentions signaling approach/avoidance behaviors. Correspondingly, these judgments are derived from facial features that resemble emotional expressions signaling such behaviors: happiness and anger for the positive and negative ends of the trustworthiness continuum, respectively. The emotion overgeneralization hypothesis can explain highly efficient but not necessarily accurate trait judgments from faces, a pattern that appears puzzling from an evolutionary point of view and also generates novel predictions about brain responses to faces. Specifically, this hypothesis predicts a nonlinear response in the amygdala to face trustworthiness, confirmed in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, and dissociations between processing of facial identity and face evaluation, confirmed in studies with developmental prosopagnosics. I conclude with some methodological implications for the study of face evaluation, focusing on the advantages of formally modeling representation of faces on social dimensions.
How cate-gory structure influences the perception of object simi-larity: The atypicality bias Article 147 Exploring the perceptual spaces of faces, cars and birds in children and adults
  • J W Tanaka
  • J Kantner
  • M Bartlett
  • J W Tanaka
  • T L Meixner
  • J Kantner
Tanaka, J. W., Kantner, J., & Bartlett, M. (2012). How cate-gory structure influences the perception of object simi-larity: The atypicality bias. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, Article 147. Retrieved from http://journal.frontiersin.org/ Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00147/full Tanaka, J. W., Meixner, T. L., & Kantner, J. (2011). Exploring the perceptual spaces of faces, cars and birds in children and adults. Developmental Science, 14, 762–768.