The Nonlinear and Gender-Related Relationships of Face Attractiveness and Typicality With Perceived Trustworthiness

Abstract

Perceived trustworthiness is one of the most important facial traits in social interaction. To elucidate how facial trustworthiness is assessed by others and its relationship to other facial traits would have significant theoretical and practical implications. Prior studies have shown that perceived attractiveness and typicality of a face may contribute to trustworthiness judgments; i.e., trustworthy faces are always the typical and attractive ones. Here, by conducting judgments of facial traits (i.e., trustworthiness, attractiveness, and typicality) on the same set of faces, we revealed a more profound relationship among these facial traits. First, we found that trustworthiness judgments did not always peak at the average face, in contrast to previous research. Second, trustworthiness exhibited a nonlinear relationship with attractiveness and typicality: Men relied more on typicality when judging a face as untrustworthy or neutral, whereas women relied more on typicality when judging a face as untrustworthy but more on attractiveness when judging a face as trustworthy. Third, women and men may utilize different traits to evaluate face trustworthiness: The relationship between trustworthiness and typicality judgments was closer in men than in women, whereas women counted on face attractiveness more than men did to evaluate face trustworthiness. These findings demonstrate that judging the trustworthiness of a face is a more complex process than previously thought, which may lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying highly flexible and sophisticated social interactions in humans.

Semantic Differential of the Concept of Beauty

“…In connection with the understanding of beauty, this category is more significant for women than men. Most of the existing studies that have focused on gender differences in the evaluation of beauty have concentrated on the assessment of the beauty of faces or bodies (see e.g., Li & Liu, 2021;Salusso-Deonier et al, 1993;Voges et al, 2019) -there has been very little study of the concept of beauty in the context of the term itself. It is possible that women have a tendency to more strongly associate beauty with the evaluation dimension than men due to their specific life experiences -the socio-cultural environment in which the research was conducted, in the past, linked a woman's value to her beauty, and in certain areas (fashion, media...) beauty still significantly influences the evaluation of women.…”

The Dark Triad in Faces: The Influence of Personality Characteristics and Gender on Perceived Attractiveness

“…Scientific discussions regarding ambiguous results related to the attractiveness of personality characteristics present in facial composites have drawn attention to several potential influential factors. They range from age (Palumbo et al, 2017), the gender of the evaluator (Carter et al, 2014;Li & Liu, 2021) and even to the gender of the evaluated face (Hoss et al, 2005). In particular, the context of intersexual relationships (i.e., assessing the attractiveness of an individual in the context of evaluating them as a potential mate) can significantly modify the preferences of the evaluator.…”