Social presence and the composite face effect

Abstract

A robust finding in social psychology research is that performance is modulated by the social nature of a given context, promoting social inhibition or facilitation effects. In the present experiment, we examined if and how social presence impacts holistic face perception processes by asking participants, in the presence of others and alone, to perform the composite face task. Results suggest that completing the task in the presence of others (i.e., mere co-action) is associated with better performance in face recognition (less bias and higher discrimination between presented and non-presented targets) and with a reduction in the composite face effect. These results make clear that social presence impact on the composite face effect does not occur because presence increases reliance on holistic processing as a "dominant" well-learned response, but instead, because it increases monitoring of the interference produced by automatic response.

Communication and trust: rethinking the way construction industry professionals and software vendors utilise computer communication mediums

“…Social presence, more commonly than media richness is found to be effective in task performance through the mere presence of others. However, it is nonetheless situational and may impede performance (Garcia-Marques, Fernandes, Fonseca, & Prada, 2015). Social presence in media communication is an inherently important consideration for communication models which can have online-invisible, knock-on effects which manifest in non-mediated interactions (Sutcliffe, Binder, & Dunbar, 2018).…”

The composite face illusion

“…For example, Navon priming manipulations that bias observers' attention towards global form increase susceptibility to the composite-face illusion measured using the complete design (Gao, Flevaris, Robertson, & Bentin, 2011). Conversely, induction of negative mood (Curby, Johnson, & Tyson, 2012) and the presence of unrelated observers (Garcia-Marques, Fernandes, Fonseca, & Prada, 2015), were found to decrease illusion susceptibility when measured using the original matching procedure. In a study employing the complete design, greater distractor interference was observed for composites made from unfamiliar non-face objects when trials were preceded by an aligned composite face (Richler, Bukach, & Gauthier, 2009).…”