Toward a comprehensive model of face impressions: What we know, what we do not, and paths forward

Hehman, Eric; Stolier, Ryan M.; Freeman, Jonathan B.; Xie, Sally Y

doi:10.1111/spc3.12431

Cited by 58 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 86 publications

(134 reference statements)

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“…Which facial characteristics do people rely on when forming personality impressions from faces? Previous research has produced a long list of facial features that influence personality impressions (Hehman et al, 2019;Todorov et al, 2015). These findings on the basis of personality impressions also provide the foundation for broader theories in social perception aiming to explain the accuracy and functional significance of personality impressions (Carré et al, 2009;Todorov et al, 2008;Zebrowitz, 2017).…”

Section: Which Facial Features Are Central In Impression Formation?mentioning

confidence: 88%

Which facial features are central in impression formation?

Jaeger¹,

Jones²

2020

Preprint

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Which facial characteristics do people rely on when forming personality impressions from faces? Previous research has uncovered an array of facial features that influence people’s impressions. Even though some (classes of) features, such as facial width-to-height ratio or resemblances to emotional expressions, play a central role in theories of social perception, their relative importance in impression formation remains unclear. Here, we model faces along a wide range of theoretically important dimensions. We use machine learning to test how well 31 features predict impressions of trustworthiness and dominance in a diverse set of 597 faces. In line with overgeneralization theory, emotion resemblances were most predictive of both traits. Other features that have received a lot of attention in the literature, such as facial width-to-height ratio, were relatively uninformative. Our results highlight the importance of modeling faces along a wide range of dimensions to elucidate their relative importance in impression formation.

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Section: Which Facial Features Are Central In Impression Formation?mentioning

confidence: 88%

Which facial features are central in impression formation?

Jaeger¹,

Jones²

2020

Preprint

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“…Face stimuli incorporating various races or emotional expressions will likely modify the dimensions of face judgments 15,24,27 , as will viewing angle, background, and other context effects. Our ndings provide the most comprehensive characterization of trait judgments from the physiognomy of faces alone, yielding candidate mental dimensions to investigate with respect to all these further variables, as well as in neuroimaging studies of face judgments 56 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prior work has reported both common 3 and discrepant dimensions in different cultures 13,14,24,35,37 . To test the generalizability of our ndings, we conducted a second preregistered study to collect data across seven different regions of the world.…”

Section: Generalizability Across Different Countries and Regionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four dimensions characterizing comprehensive trait judgments of faces

Lin¹,

Keleş²,

Adolphs³

2020

Preprint

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People readily attribute many traits to faces: some look beautiful, some competent, some aggressive. Modern psychological theories argue that the hundreds of different words people use to describe others from their faces are well captured by only two or three dimensions, such as valence and dominance, a highly influential framework that has been the basis for numerous studies across social and developmental psychology, social neuroscience, and engineering applications. However, all prior work has used only a small number of words (12 to 18) to derive underlying dimensions, limiting conclusions to date. Here we employed deep neural networks to select a comprehensive set of 100 words that are representative of the trait words people use to describe faces, and to select a set of 100 faces. In two large-scale, preregistered studies we asked participants to rate the 100 faces on the 100 words (obtaining 2,850,000 ratings from 1,710 participants), and discovered a novel set of four psychological dimensions that best explain trait judgments of faces: warmth, competence, femininity, and youth. We reproduced these four dimensions across different regions around the world, in both aggregated and individual-level data. These results provide a new and most comprehensive characterization of face judgments.

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“…A proximal source of these differences are the diverging experiencedependent attitudes that Black and White North Americans have about law enforcement and institutional authority (Berthelot et al 2018;Brunson and Weitzer 2009;Carr et al n.d.;Lee et al 2010). Indeed, more formal models of social perception have begun describing how stereotypic expectations of others based on social identities (e.g., race) and social roles (e.g., being a police officer) influence social perception at many levels (Freeman and Ambady 2011;Hehman et al 2017Hehman et al , 2019Lloyd et al 2020;Stolier et al 2018Stolier et al , 2020. These expectations shape how we interpret both inherent and momentary aspects of facial appearance (Collova et al 2019;Kunstman et al 2016;Lloyd et al 2017a, b;Sutherland et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual Development and Change Precede Adults’ Judgments About Powerful Appearance

Terrizzi

2020

Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology

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Objective Adults' mental representations of the physical appearance of people that are "strong" and people that are "in charge" are remarkably similar. Some have explained this feature of adults' thinking by positing innate mental representations. However, specific details about the nature and structure of these representations, and an appropriate empirical foundation for these claims has been lacking. In this review, my objective is to provide a high-level summary of recent research exploring infants' and young children's intuitions about the physical manifestations of power. I argue that the social responses and judgments of these young participants are more informative about the existence and nature of putatively innate mental content. Methods Narrative review of developmental studies. Results Preverbal infants exhibit a remarkably early sensitivity to the relative power of two agents. By early childhood, children exhibit increasingly adultlike intuitions about powerful appearance. However, there are significant revisions in the appearance-to-power correspondences that people detect between childhood and adulthood. Conclusions These complex developmental patterns are inconsistent with the idea that adults' intuitions about the physical manifestations of power are straightforward outputs of an innate psychology. Rather, despite an early-emerging sensitivity to appearance-based cues to power, significant conceptual development and change precede adults' judgments about powerful appearance.

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Toward a comprehensive model of face impressions: What we know, what we do not, and paths forward

Cited by 58 publications

References 86 publications

Which facial features are central in impression formation?

Which facial features are central in impression formation?

Four dimensions characterizing comprehensive trait judgments of faces

Conceptual Development and Change Precede Adults’ Judgments About Powerful Appearance

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