Judging trustworthiness from faces: Emotion cues modulate trustworthiness judgments in young children

Caulfield, Frances; Ewing, Louise; Bank, Samantha R.; Rhodes, Gillian

doi:10.1111/bjop.12156

Cited by 48 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Recently, it has been shown that children evaluate a face's character in a similar manner as adults do, providing first insights into the ontogeny of face evaluation (Caulfield, Ewing, Bank, & Rhodes, 2015;Cogsdill, Todorov, Spelke, & Banaji, 2014). Children of ages 3 and above tend to classify trustworthy-looking faces as nice, dominantlooking faces as strong, and competent-looking faces as smart (Cogsdill et al, 2014), and from 5 years on, children can also explicitly judge faces as more or less trustworthy (Caulfield et al, 2015). Importantly, Cogsdill and colleagues (2014) showed that children's face-to-trait inferences might reflect more general valence-based decisions; children (and adults) were shown to apply the mean versus nice evaluation not only to faces varying in trustworthiness but also in dominance and competence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Infants' Sensitivity to the Trustworthiness of Faces

Jessen

Großmann

2016

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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Face evaluation is a key aspect of face processing in humans, serving important functions in regulating social interactions. Adults and preschool children readily evaluate faces with respect to a person's trustworthiness and dominance. However, it is unclear whether face evaluation is mainly a product of extensive learning or a foundational building block of face perception already during infancy. We examined infants' sensitivity to facial signs of trustworthiness (Experiment 1) and dominance (Experiment 2) by measuring ERPs and looking behavior in response to faces that varied with respect to the two facial attributes. Results revealed that 7-month-old infants are sensitive to facial signs of trustworthiness but not dominance. This sensitivity was reflected in infants' behavioral preference and in the modulation of brain responses previously linked to emotion detection from faces. These findings provide first evidence that processing faces with respect to trustworthiness has its origins in infancy and shed light on the behavioral and neural correlates of this early emerging sensitivity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Infants' Sensitivity to the Trustworthiness of Faces

Jessen

Großmann

2016

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

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“…Some recent evidence suggests that children also use facial information to make social judgments: By around 3 or 4 years of age they begin to use this information to assess the trustworthiness of strangers (Cogsdill, Todorov, Spelke, & Banaji, 2014). This ability continues to develop until around 10 years of age (Caulfield, Ewing, Bank, & Rhodes, 2015), at which time children's trustworthiness ratings of faces become comparable to those of adults. There is also some evidence suggesting these judgments have behavioral implications.…”

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confidence: 99%

Judging a Book by Its Cover: Children's Facial Trustworthiness as Judged by Strangers Predicts Their Real‐World Trustworthiness and Peer Relationships

Heyman

Mei

et al. 2017

Child Development

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This longitudinal research examined whether children's facial trustworthiness as judged by strangers can predict their real-world trustworthiness and peer acceptance. Adults (Study 1) and children (Study 2) judged the facial trustworthiness of 8- to 12-year-old children (N = 100) solely based on their photographs. The children's classmates were asked to report their real-world trustworthiness and peer acceptance. Children's facial trustworthiness reliably predicted these outcomes both initially when the photographs were taken, as well as 1 year later, and this effect was mediated by the initial ratings of real-world trustworthiness and peer acceptance. These results provide evidence for a long-lasting linkage between children's facial and real-world trustworthiness.

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“…Indeed, children associated more knowledgeable behaviours with trustworthy‐looking faces and more unknowledgeable behaviours with untrustworthy‐looking faces. This finding extends prior work on preschoolers’ early ability to differentiate between trustworthy‐ and untrustworthy‐looking faces (Caulfield et al ., ) and, to our knowledge, is the first study to demonstrate that children's explicit knowledge judgements are influenced by whether someone appears trustworthy or not. The fact that children make these inferences is important for several reasons.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 72%

“…There is also work from the domain of face processing that suggests that even young children are quite familiar with distinguishing between trustworthy‐ and untrustworthy‐looking faces, but possibly less familiar with the distinction between competent‐ and incompetent‐looking faces. For example, children are sensitive to facial features associated with trustworthiness from infancy (Jessen & Grossmann, ), and by preschool, they are able to distinguish between trustworthy‐ and untrustworthy‐looking faces when making decisions about others (Caulfield, Ewing, Bank, & Rhodes, ; Ewing, Caulfield, Read, & Rhodes, ). However, children may be less sensitive to features associated with competence and appear to only begin to notice these features around 5 years of age (Charlesworth, Hudson, Cogsdill, Spelke, & Banaji, ; Cogsdill et al ., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Looking smart: Preschoolers’ judgements about knowledge based on facial appearance

Palmquist

Cheries

DeAngelis

2019

British J of Dev Psycho

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Preschoolers use others’ behaviours to make inferences about what traits they possess (Harris et al., 2018, Ann. Rev. Psychol., 69, 251). The current study examined whether 4‐ and 5‐year‐olds also associate others’ behaviour with how they appear on the surface. Specifically, we asked whether children's sensitivity to different face–traits (e.g., Cogsdill et al., 2014, Psychol. Sci., 25, 1132) would bias them to associate knowledgeable behaviours with faces that adults rate as highly competent‐ or trustworthy‐looking. We find that preschoolers expect puppets with trustworthy‐looking faces to be knowledgeable about the functions of familiar objects. In contrast, children did not match a puppet's knowledge to facial features that adults rate as varying in competence. These data suggest that children, like adults, are biased to associate facial appearance and behaviour. Furthermore, this bias appears to be rooted in a response to the same facial features that have been found to govern judgements of trustworthiness across development (e.g., Jessen & Grossmann, 2016, J. Cogn. Neurosci., 28, 1728). What is already known on this subject? Preschoolers selectively trust others using epistemic and non‐epistemic cues (Harris et al., 2018). Preschoolers associate specific faces with trustworthiness and competence (Cogsdill et al., 2014). What the present study adds? Preschoolers infer that trustworthy‐looking characters will behave knowledgeably. Preschoolers do not infer that competent‐looking characters will behave knowledgeably. Children's reliability judgements are influenced by others’ appearance.

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Judging trustworthiness from faces: Emotion cues modulate trustworthiness judgments in young children

Cited by 48 publications

References 52 publications

Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Infants' Sensitivity to the Trustworthiness of Faces

Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Infants' Sensitivity to the Trustworthiness of Faces

Judging a Book by Its Cover: Children's Facial Trustworthiness as Judged by Strangers Predicts Their Real‐World Trustworthiness and Peer Relationships

Looking smart: Preschoolers’ judgements about knowledge based on facial appearance

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