The dissociable influence of social context on judgements of facial attractiveness and trustworthiness

Abstract

The cheerleader effect occurs when the same face is rated to be more attractive when it is seen in a group compared to when seen alone. We investigated whether this phenomenon also occurs for trustworthiness judgements, and examined how these effects are influenced by the characteristics of the individual being evaluated and those of the group they are seen in. Across three experiments, we reliably replicated the cheerleader effect. Most faces became more attractive in a group. Yet, the size of the cheerleader effect that each face experienced was not related to its own attractiveness, nor to the attractiveness of the group or the group's digitally averaged face. We discuss the implications of our findings for the hierarchical encoding and contrast mechanisms that have previously been used to explain the cheerleader effect. Surprisingly, judgements of facial trustworthiness did not experience a 'cheerleader effect'. Instead, we found that untrustworthy faces became significantly more trustworthy in all groups, while there was no change for faces that were already trustworthy alone. Taken together, our results demonstrate that social context can have a dissociable influence on our first impressions, depending on the trait being evaluated. The cheerleader effectFacial attractiveness is typically considered to be signalled by physiological characteristics of the face, such as symmetry, averageness, and sexually dimorphic appearance (Little,

Comparisons make faces more attractive: An ERP study

“…The GFP of a specific state associated with the judgment of facial attractiveness in both the HAF and LAF conditions indicates the spatiotemporal dynamic changes during the processing of facial attractiveness. This idea is also supported by previous studies that suggest that the processing of facial attractiveness changes with time and context (Carragher et al, 2021). Interestingly, the GFP of state 2 mediated the relationship between narcissism and facial attractiveness judgment in the context of LAFs.…”

Catching a smile from individuals and crowds: Evidence for distinct emotional contagion processes.

“…In addition to suggesting that emotional contagion from happy crowds may be greater than from happy individuals, this indicates that contagious affect may be more intense during crowd exposure. While not previously applied to the study of emotional contagion, this appears to be in line with other areas of the ensemble encoding literature, whereby perceptions of the traits of single faces (Burns et al, 2021; Carragher et al, 2019, 2021; Walker & Vul, 2014; Ying et al, 2019) and bodies (Hsieh et al, 2021) are typically weaker than when they are viewed in groups. As such, the present research is the first to suggest, using dynamic stimuli, that emotions may be caught from a crowd, and this process may be more intense compared to interactions with individuals.…”

“…Finally, there is a growing evidence base that face trait perception of single faces or bodies is different from that viewed in crowds. Specifically, crowd traits appear enhanced, meaning that perceptions of various face traits for single faces (Burns et al, 2021;Carragher et al, 2019Carragher et al, , 2021Walker & Vul, 2014;Ying et al, 2019) and bodies (Hsieh et al, 2021) are typically weaker than when they are viewed in groups. However, there has been no previous research that has explored this systematically in relation to emotional contagion.…”

Everyday perceiver-context influences on impression formation: No evidence of consistent effects

“…Further, while dynamic in-person evaluations are not captured here, people do regularly evaluate others from static photographs (e.g., dating apps, social media) in which targets are embedded in different contexts. For instance, target contexts such as visual scenery and the presence of other people can influence judgments of trustworthiness (Brambilla et al, 2018;Mattavelli et al, 2021), emotion (Barrett & Kensinger, 2010), and attractiveness (Carragher et al, 2021). While the present work explores perceiver contexts, more work is necessary to understand how perceiver and target contexts interact to shape impressions.…”

“…More recent work has also examined how targets in different contexts are perceived, by varying the visual context of target stimuli. For example, people integrate facial cues (e.g., untrustworthy face) and contextual cues (e.g., threatening or neutral scene) when evaluating the trustworthiness of a face (Brambilla et al, 2018;Mattavelli et al, 2021), and faces appear more attractive when they appear in a group (Carragher et al, 2021) Yet perceivers also play an active role in impression formation, differing in their impressions of the same face. For instance, perceivers who vary in their social identity (Kawakami et al, 2017) or stereotype knowledge (Oh et al, 2019;Wilson et al, 2017) may evaluate the same target very differently.…”