Abstract
Person identification at airports requires the matching of a passport photograph to its bearer. One aim of this process is to find identity impostors, who use valid identity documents of similar-looking people to avoid detection. In psychology, this process has been studied extensively with static pairs of face photographs that require identity match (same person shown) versus mismatch (two different people) decisions. However, this approach provides a limited proxy for studying how other factors, such as nonverbal behaviour, affect this task. The current study investigated the influence of body language on facial identity matching within a virtual reality airport environment, by manipulating activity levels of person avatars queueing at passport control. In a series of six experiments, detection of identity mismatches was unaffected when observers were not instructed to utilise body language. By contrast, under explicit instruction to look out for unusual body language, these cues enhanced detection of mismatches but also increased false classification of matches. This effect was driven by increased activity levels rather than body language that simply differed from the behaviour of the majority of passengers. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.
Highlights
Person identification at airports requires the matching of a passport photograph to its bearer
One-factor analyses of variance (ANOVAs) did not show an effect of activity level for d0, F(2, 58) 1⁄4 0.12, p 1⁄4 .88, gp2 < .01, or criterion, F(2, 58) 1⁄4 1.84, p 1⁄4 .17, gp2 1⁄4 .06. These results converge with the analysis of the percentage accuracy data to show that body language did not affect face matching. This experiment manipulated the activity levels of avatars within a virtual passport control environment to examine whether body language influences face-matching decisions
Identity matches with idle body language presented the majority of trials, and their classification was near ceiling
Summary
Person identification at airports requires the matching of a passport photograph to its bearer. This process has been studied extensively with static pairs of face photographs that require identity match (same person shown) versus mismatch (two different people) decisions This approach provides a limited proxy for studying how other factors, such as nonverbal behaviour, affect this task. A few studies have examined face matching under these kinds of circumstances, for example, by examining the ability of supermarket cashiers (Kemp et al, 1997) or passport officers (White et al, 2014) to identify people from photo-ID during faceto-face interaction, or to examine the benefit of viewing multiple images of a person for face identification (Ritchie et al, 2020) Such experiments are logistically challenging, and participants’ behaviours are difficult to control systematically. Face matching is difficult to study systematically in occupational field settings, such as at passport control, owing to the security-sensitive nature of this task
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