Perspective Distortion from Interpersonal Distance Is an Implicit Visual Cue for Social Judgments of Faces

Abstract

The basis on which people make social judgments from the image of a face remains an important open problem in fields ranging from psychology to neuroscience and economics. Multiple cues from facial appearance influence the judgments that viewers make. Here we investigate the contribution of a novel cue: the change in appearance due to the perspective distortion that results from viewing distance. We found that photographs of faces taken from within personal space elicit lower investments in an economic trust game, and lower ratings of social traits (such as trustworthiness, competence, and attractiveness), compared to photographs taken from a greater distance. The effect was replicated across multiple studies that controlled for facial image size, facial expression and lighting, and was not explained by face width-to-height ratio, explicit knowledge of the camera distance, or whether the faces are perceived as typical. These results demonstrate a novel facial cue influencing a range of social judgments as a function of interpersonal distance, an effect that may be processed implicitly.

Distance Estimation of an Unknown Person from a Portrait

“…Recovering the distance of a face has a number of applications: as an additional cue to depth in scene analysis, as an indicator of the possible emotional valence of the picture [1], as a tool to study portraiture in classical paintings, and as a tool for forensic analysis of images [3]. Our experiments are encouraging, and are sufficient as a proof of principle to demonstrate feasibility.…”

“…Psychologists [1] observed that portrait photographs taken from within personal space elicit lower investments in an economic trust game and lower ratings of social traits such as strength, attractiveness or trustworthiness. These findings could not be explained by width-to-height ratio, explicit knowledge of the camera distance or typicality of the presented faces, thus suggesting the existence of a facial cue influencing social judgments as a function of interpersonal distance.…”

“…First, faces are present in most consumer pictures; if faces could provide a cue to distance, this would be useful for scene analysis. Second, psychologists have pointed out that the distance from which a portrait is captured affects its emotional valence [1]; therefore, estimating this distance from a given picture would provide a cue to automate the assessment of its emotional valence. Third, estimating the distance from which master paintings were produced will provide art historians with useful information on art practices throughout the ages [2].…”

Camera Distance from Face Images

“…A similar psychology based studied is presented in [5,6]. Here, Perona et al investigate the effects of perspective distortion as visual cue for social judgement of faces.…”

Far and Yet Close: Multiple Viewpoints for the Perfect Portrait

“…These differences are rather small, and they are typically not noticed explicitly by a casual observer viewing a single picture. However, these differences are available to the visual system and have a significant emotional impact; this was revealed by a number of psychophysical experiments that my collaborators and I carried out in the laboratory (Bryan et al, 2012;Perona, 2007). A closer (0.6-1.2 m) viewing distance makes the sitter seem more approachable, peaceful and friendly, while longer viewing distances (2.4 m and more) give the impression of aloofness and, relatively speaking, unfriendliness and hostility (see Fig.…”