Face Attractiveness in Building Trust: Evidence from Measurement of Implicit and Explicit Responses

Abstract

We explored individuals' behavior in relation to level of trust when they encounter attractive or unattractive faces. Individuals' implicit responses were examined in Experiment 1 and their explicit responses in Experiment 2. Results of Experiment 1 indicated that the latency of the unattractive faces with words indicating trust or attractive faces with words indicating distrust (incompatible group) was twice as long as that of the attractive faces with trust words or unattractive faces with distrust words (compatible group). In Experiment 2, we used an investment game to measure individuals' explicit trusting behavior and found that participants gave significantly more money to attractive partners than they did to unattractive partners. These findings extend understanding of the relationship between perceptions of attractiveness and trust building.

Pleasant body odours, but not genetic similarity, influence trustworthiness in a modified trust game

“…We found that raters transferred more money to the odour donors if they found their body odour pleasant. This parallels studies demonstrating a relationship between a man's attractiveness and his apparent trustworthiness 29 . An explanation for why good-looking men are trusted more than men who are less good-looking is that attractiveness serves as an easily accessible cue to more complex and not easily accessible traits such as trustworthiness 36 .…”

“…For example, Wilson and Eckel 28 showed that good-looking trustees were viewed as more trustworthy in a game involving trust and reciprocity. A similar "beauty premium" was found in a hypothetical trust game, where participants invested significantly more money in good-looking partners than they did in partners that were less good looking 29 . An evolutionary account of this "beauty premium" states that attractiveness benefits can be explained by mating motivations 30 .…”

“…An evolutionary account of this "beauty premium" states that attractiveness benefits can be explained by mating motivations 30 . However, because the beauty premium also affects same-sex interactions 29,31 , others have pointed out that mate choice is not the only type of partner choice that has benefitted from preferences for physical attractiveness 32,33 . Other factors such as (intra-sexual) competition, friendship or leadership selection can likewise play a role in bias towards attractive individuals.…”

Not Just Right Experiences in Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders

“…This may be a result of the degree of facial unattractiveness. In the pilot study, the female face assigned to the matched unattractive target was ranked as less unattractive than the faces assigned to the mismatched targets with unattractive faces, which would remain consistent with Zhao et al (2015). Other research found that same-sex friends normally have the same level of physical attractiveness (Bleske-Recheck & Lighthall, 2010), so participants in the present study might have indicated a preference to be friends with someone who they considered to be of similar attractiveness as themselves.…”

Is Trustworthiness Written on the Face?

“…We analyze whether trustworthiness can be correctly predicted based on facial appearance by asking a second group of subjects to evaluate the expected trustworthiness of the participants of the Trust Game. Some prior studies used photos of players in the Trust Game, but these studies differ from our approach as they show pictures of the player to their counterpart, thus giving the player more information (see for example Wilson & Eckel, 2006;Buchan et al, 2008;Centorrino et al, 2014;Zhao et al, 2015). 2 There exists also research on the influence of other information on the observed behavior in the Trust Game and in other games.…”