Is the face a window to the soul? Investigation of the accuracy of intuitive judgments of the trustworthiness of human faces.

Abstract

Although trustworthiness judgments based on a stranger's face occur rapidly (Willis & Todorov, 2006), their accuracy is unknown. We examined the accuracy of trustworthiness judgments of the faces of 2 groups differing in trustworthiness (Nobel Peace Prize recipients/humanitarians vs. America's Most Wanted criminals). Participants viewed 34 faces each for 100 ms or 30 s and rated their trustworthiness. Subsequently, participants were informed about the nature of the 2 groups and estimated group membership for each face. Judgments formed with extremely brief exposure were similar in accuracy and confidence to those formed after a long exposure. However, initial judgments of untrustworthy (criminals') faces were less accurate (M ϭ 48.8%) than were those of trustworthy faces (M ϭ 62.7%). Judgment accuracy was above chance for trustworthy targets only at Time 1 and slightly above chance for both target types at Time 2. Participants relied on perceived kindness and aggressiveness to inform their rapidly formed intuitive decisions. Thus, intuition plays a minor facilitative role in reading faces.

Dangerous decisions: the impact of first impressions of trustworthiness on the evaluation of legal evidence and defendant culpability

“…However, the evolutionary development of deception and emotional concealment (which we think occurred later than rapid trustworthiness or dangerousness assessments in human evolution) has complicated the assessment of interpersonal trustworthiness (e.g. O'Sullivan, 2003), making assessments of trustworthiness more difficult and prone to error (Ekman, 1992;Leach, Talwar, Lee, Bala, & Lindsay, 2004;Porter & ten Brinke, 2008).…”

“…Roney, Hanson, Durante, & Maestripieri, 2006;Shevlin, Walker, Davies, Banyard, & Lewis, 2003), the assessment of trustworthiness does not appear to be among them. Porter, England, Juodis and ten Brinke (2008) presented participants with a group of faces consisting of America's Most Wanted criminals and humanitarian award (e.g. Nobel Peace Prize) winners (simply asking them to evaluate 'strangers' faces).…”

Facial Perceptions: Age's Influence on People's Perceptions of Facial Modifications

“…14 The methodological approach of the Porter et al (2008) study was to individually present target faces of known criminals and award winners varying in trustworthiness for either 100 ms or 30s. First, participants were asked to assess and rate each face on three traits: trustworthiness, kindness, and aggressiveness.…”

“…Previous studies such as Porter et al (2008) and Wohlrab et al (2009a) suggest that such keenness of facial cues is intuitively built into humans for evolutionary purposes i.e. survival, mate selection.…”

“…5 Many people believe they can assess an individual's personality through facial appearance alone. 6 Like faces, body modifications, particularly tattoos, signal and convey information about a person. 7 Generally, people associate certain personality characteristics with body modifications.…”