How Does Another Person's Face Guide Us To Fear Or Trust?

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How Does Another Person's Face Guide Us To Fear Or Trust?

SciMed - Neuroscience

TS-Si News Service

Wednesday, 06 August 2008 17:30

Impact Of Other Faces

Princeton University researchers developed a computer program that analyzes the facial features that make people appear trustworthy or fearsome.

These images are some of the most extreme examples. They display computer-generated faces with a range of characteristics.

Most Trustworthy

Neutral (because of the blank expression)

Least Trustworthy

How Does Another Person's Face Guide Us To Fear Or Trust? TS-Si News Service. TS-Si.org (05 August 2008).

All images courtesy of Alexander Todorov and Nikolaas Oosterhof, Princeton University.

Princeton, NJ, USA. Just what is it about certain human faces that makes them look either trustworthy or fearsome? Psychology researchers from Princeton University developed a computer program that allows this analysis the construction of computer-generated faces that display the most trustworthy or dominant faces possible.

The work has implications for those who care what effect their faces may have upon a beholder, whther it be a person in HBS transition, retail employees who interact with the public, and criminal defendants.

The functional basis of face evaluation. Nikolaas N. Oosterhof and Alexander Todorov. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0805664105 [ Download PDF ]

Alexander Todorov, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton, and Nikolaas Oosterhof, a research specialist, have published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research continues a prior inquiry into the myriad messages conveyed by the human face. Todorov's lab gained wide notice with a 2005 study published in Science demonstrating that quick facial judgments can accurately predict real-world election results. [C6]

They learned over time that people tend to make instant judgments about faces that guide them in how they feel about that person. [C2-7] The scientists decided to search for a way to quantify and define exactly what it is about each person's face that conveys a sense they can be trusted or feared. They chose those precise traits because they found they corresponded with a whole host of other vital characteristics, such as happiness and maturity.

Alexander Todorov, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton University.

Todorov's research focuses on subtleties of the simple plane containing the eyes, nose and mouth. "Humans seem to be wired to look to faces to understand the person's intentions."

"People are always asking themselves, 'Does this person have good or bad intentions?'"

To conduct the study, the scientists showed unfamiliar faces to test subjects and asked them to describe traits they could gauge from the faces. The scientists boiled down the list of traits to about a dozen of the most commonly cited characteristics, including aggressiveness, unkemptness and various emotional states. The researchers showed the faces to another group and asked them to rate each face for the degree to which it possessed one of the dozen listed traits.

Based on this data, the scientists found that humans make split-second judgments on faces on two major measures:

whether the person should be approached or avoided and
whether the person is weak or strong.

From there, using a commercial software program that generates composites of human faces (based on laser scans of real subjects), the scientists asked another group of test subjects to look at 300 faces and rate them for trustworthiness, dominance and threat. Common features of both trustworthiness and dominance emerged.

A trustworthy face, at its most extreme, has a U-shaped mouth and eyes that form an almost surprised look.
An untrustworthy face, at its most extreme, is an angry one with the edges of the mouth curled down and eyebrows pointing down at the center.
The least dominant face possible is one resembling a baby's with a larger distance between the eyes and the eyebrows than other faces.
A threatening face can be obtained by averaging an untrustworthy and a dominant face.

Using the program and the ratings from subjects, the scientists could actually construct models of how faces vary on these social dimensions. Once those models were established, the scientists could exaggerate faces along these dimensions, show them to other test subjects to confirm that they were eliciting the predicted emotional response, and find out what facial features are critical for different social judgments.

"If you can think of an emotion being communicated by the face as a kind of signal, you can understand that we can amplify that signal into what was almost a caricature to see if we get the proper effect," Todorov said. "And we do."

The research raises questions about whether the

brain is equipped with a special mechanism for "reading" or evaluating faces, he said.

Some studies of infants have shown that, when offered a choice between looking at a random pattern and one resembling a human face, infants prefer the face.
And there is evidence that face-seeking is deeply rooted in both the psyche and evolution as the amygdala, a primitive region of the brain, is stimulated when someone spies a scary face.

While it may be true that people have little control over their facial features, the study also indicates that expressions may be important as well, which could have implications for people in jobs that require extensive interactions with the public.

The research was supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and a Huygens Scholarship from the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education.

[C1] The functional basis of face evaluation. Nikolaas N. Oosterhof and Alexander Todorov. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). doi: 10.1073 / pnas.0805664105 [ Download PDF ]

Abstract

People automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions, and these evaluations predict important social outcomes, ranging from electoral success to sentencing decisions. Based on behavioral studies and computer modeling, we develop a 2D model of face evaluation. First, using a principal components analysis of trait judgments of emotionally neutral faces, we identify two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, that are sufficient to describe face evaluation and show that these dimensions can be approximated by judgments of trustworthiness and dominance. Second, using a data-driven statistical model for face representation, we build and validate models for representing face trustworthiness and face dominance. Third, using these models, we show that, whereas valence evaluation is more sensitive to features resembling expressions signaling whether the person should be avoided or approached, dominance evaluation is more sensitive to features signaling physical strength/weakness. Fourth, we show that important social judgments, such as threat, can be reproduced as a function of the two orthogonal dimensions of valence and dominance. The findings suggest that face evaluation involves an overgeneralization of adaptive mechanisms for inferring harmful intentions and the ability to cause harm and can account for rapid, yet not necessarily accurate, judgments from faces.

Related References

[C2] Predicting political elections from rapid and unreflective face judgments. Ballew, C. C., & Todorov, A. (2007). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 104(46) 17948-17953.

[C3] Implicit trustworthiness decisions: Automatic coding of face properties in human amygdala. Engell, A. D., Haxby, J. V., & Todorov, A. (2007). Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19 1508-1519.

[C4] Spontaneous retrieval of affective person knowledge in face perception. Todorov, A., Gobbini, M. I., Evans, K. K, & Haxby, J. V. (2007). Neuropsychologia 45 163-173.

[C5] First impressions: Making up your mind after 100 ms exposure to a face. Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). Psychological Science 17 592-598.

[C6] Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., & Hall, C. C. (2005). Science 308 1623-1626.

[C7] The efficiency of binding spontaneous trait inferences to faces. Todorov, A., & Uleman, J.S. (2003). Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39 549-562.

The TS-Si News Service is a collaborative effort by TS-Si.org editors, contributors, and corresponding institutions. Sources can include the cited individuals and organizations, as well as TS-Si.org staff contributions. Articles and news reports do not necessarily convey official positions of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates. We welcome your comments. Use the form below to leave a public comment or send private correspondence via the TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 06 August 2008 15:06

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