Visual cues to interpersonal evaluations for pedestrians

Abstract

Pedestrians need to be able to evaluate other people to support their feeling of safety. While past studies have thus investigated the degree to which road lighting supports facial identity and facial emotion evaluations, it is not yet known whether the face is the most important visual cue. Following a pilot study that indicated the importance of the ability to see the face and hands of other people, an experiment was conducted in which test participants evaluated safety when shown photographs of an approaching person in night-time scenes. These photographs displayed variations in the exposure or concealment of the face and hands. Two procedures were used, category rating and paired comparisons. The results suggest that the face is a more important visual cue than the hands for pedestrians’ evaluations of the intent of other pedestrians after dark.

Editorial: Special issue for early career researchers in lighting

“…Rather than conducting a study in controlled experimental conditions, as is often the case, Hennig et al 2 used undisturbed field observations. Hamoodh et al 3 showed through a photograph-based experiment that the face, rather than the hands, of an approaching pedestrian is the most important visual cue in interpersonal safety evaluations during night-time. Lastly, Jedon et al 4 proposed a new theoretical framework for evaluating street lighting that includes factors previously unaccounted for, such as alertness, arousal and anxiety.…”