Polling the face: Prediction and consensus across cultures.

Abstract

Previous work has shown that individuals agree across cultures on the traits that they infer from faces. Previous work has also shown that inferences from faces can be predictive of important outcomes within cultures. The current research merges these two lines of work. In a series of cross-cultural studies, the authors asked American and Japanese participants to provide naïve inferences of traits from the faces of U.S. political candidates (Studies 1 and 3) and Japanese political candidates (Studies 2 and 4). Perceivers showed high agreement in their ratings of the faces, regardless of culture, and both sets of judgments were predictive of an important ecological outcome (the percentage of votes that each candidate received in the actual election). The traits predicting electoral success differed, however, depending on the targets' culture. Thus, when American and Japanese participants were asked to provide explicit inferences of how likely each candidate would be to win an election (Studies 3-4), judgments were predictive only for same-culture candidates. Attempts to infer the electoral success for the foreign culture showed evidence of self-projection. Therefore, perceivers can reliably infer predictive information from faces but require knowledge about the target's culture to make these predictions accurately.

Judgments of Power From College Yearbook Photos and Later Career Success

“…In U.S. culture, dominance and power are strongly associated with perceived leadership abilities as well as with leadership performance outcomes (Rule & Ambady, 2008;Rule et al, 2010). The present data show not only that these perceptions may correspond with actual ability but also that the seeds of the relationship between perceptions and performance are evident early on; that is, the perceptions can predict the outcomes before the task begins.…”

“…In each block, participants saw all 73 faces (either the current or yearbook photos) presented in random order. The order of the blocks was random, and each block consisted of a different trait judgment: dominance, facial maturity, likeability, and trustworthiness (Rule et al, 2010). Each trait was rated along a 7-point scale, anchored at 1 (not at all x) and 7 (very x; all Cronbach's as > .81).…”

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

“…With the operationalizations of distrust used, I intend to (a) closely model the form of distrust relevant to private creativity, and to (b) instill distrust in a pure fashion ("mere state of distrust"; Schul et al, 2004, p. 669) that does not simultaneously involve additional social factors such as, for example, decreased liking of a specific target (cf., Rule et al, 2010;Tyler, Feldman, & Reichert, 2006). I, therefore, chose to manipulate distrust in a subtle way and to separate the distrust manipulation from the creativity task.…”

Perceptions of Dominance following Glimpses of Faces and Bodies

“…Displays of status help to organize social groups by providing hierarchies that assign roles to different members of the group (eg Schmid Mast 2001). Indeed, perceptions of dominance have previously been found to be highly consistent and predictive of important outcomes across perceivers (eg Keating et al 1981;Rule et al 2010), perhaps indicating that individuals are somewhat predisposed towards evaluating dominance and submission (Mazur 2005). Dominance can be readily judged from nonverbal behaviors (eg Schmid Mast and Hall 2004) and can have influences on the perception of important social traits, such as attractiveness and affect (Keating 1985;Ohman 1986;Raines et al 1990; see also Olson and Marshuetz 2005).…”