Facial appearance and impressions of ‘credibility’: The effects of facial babyishness and age on person perception

Abstract

T he babyface overgeneralization effect is perceiving that people whose facial features resemble those of children have childlike traits, and treating them accordingly. This experiment sought to replicate the US findings with a South-European sample, to examine the impact of facial maturity on impressions of truthfulness, and to examine the influence of age on person perception. Three-hundred and twenty-four Spanish undergraduates were shown a photograph and had to rate it on a series of behavioural-tendency and trait scales measuring honesty, truthfulness, strength, dominance, intelligence, naivety, and warmth. The photographs were babyfaced, intermediate, and mature faced computer-manipulated versions of three pictures of the same individual at three different ages. Results indicate that the experimental manipulations significantly affected most of the dependent variables. Babyfaced individuals were perceived as the most truthful, and children as the most deceitful. However, when the deceit concerned a sexual abuse allegation, children were rated as the least deceitful. These results support the existence of (a) the babyface overgeneralization effect, (b) the stereotype that children are unreliable witnesses, and (c) the belief that children never lie about sexual abuse offenses. They also suggest that facial babyishness and age may be static perceived deception cues that may account for the demeanour bias found in nonverbal research on the detection of deceit.Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Jaume Masip,

Consistency of the Relation Between Individual Facial Cues and the Perceived Suggestibility and Trustworthiness Across Varying Facial Expressions

“…Furthermore, expression-invariant femininity and benevolence also predicted high perceived suggestibility and trustworthiness similarly to what higher attractiveness usually does. These results are consistent with other studies (Berry and McArthur 1985, Keating, Randall, Kendrick, and Gutshall 2003, Masip and Garrido 2001, Masip, Garrido, and Herrero 2004, Perrett et al 1998, Zebrowitz, Voinescu, and Collins 1996, Zebrowitz and Montepare 1992.…”

Adults' ability to detect children's lying

“…Thus, generally speaking, if and when children do leak reliable indicators of deception, raters tend to be insensitive to them and do not rely on them to discriminate liars from truth-tellers (Talwar & Lee, 2002). In fact, some findings suggest that adults may have a bias toward disbelieving children's statements, which is in contrast with the typical truth bias found with adult statements (Masip, Garrido, & Herrero, 2004;Vrij & Baxter, 1999; although see also Edelstein et al, 2006;Westcott et al, 1991). This suggests that children who are telling the truth about an experienced event are more likely to be perceived as liars, rather than being given the ''benefit of the doubt''.…”

Dependence of the Appearance-Based Perception of Criminality, Suggestibility, and Trustworthiness on the Level of Pixelation of Facial Images

“…More specifically, size of the eyes, shape of the eyebrows, relative proportions of the upper and lower parts of the face and general baby-face-like qualities have been listed as feminine physical cues (Masip, garrido, & Herrero, 2004;zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008). (Notice also that correlation between ratings of perceived trustworthiness and suggestibility obtained in the two parts of Experiment 2 was quite strong, r = .64.…”