Abstract
People often judge trustworthiness based on others’ faces (e.g., facial expression and facial gender). However, it is unclear whether social context plays a moderating role in forming trustworthiness judgments. Based on the emotions as social information (EASI) model, differing contexts may impact the effect of facial expression; however, there is no evidence demonstrating that differing contexts will or will not influence the effect of facial gender. In this study, we used two experiments to examine how facial expression and facial gender affect facial trustworthiness judgments and whether the effects on facial trustworthiness judgments are consistent in cooperative and competitive settings. Twenty-seven undergraduates (14 female; Mage = 21.81 years, SD = 2.66) participated in experiment 1. The results showed significant main effects of facial expression and facial gender as well as the interaction between them. To examine the social context effect, 28 undergraduates (18 female; Mage = 20.93 years, SD = 2.94) participated in experiment 2. The results showed the main effects of facial expression, facial gender, and social context. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between facial gender and facial expression and a marginally significant interaction between social context and facial expression. These results suggest that in the process of judging facial trustworthiness, individuals’ judgments are affected by both facial expression and facial gender. Furthermore, the effect of facial gender on facial trustworthiness judgments presents cross-situational stability, and the role of facial expression is influenced by the settings. These findings support and expand the EASI model.
Highlights
Trustworthiness judgments can be made at first glance
Based on previous literature (e.g., Hack, 2014), we hypothesized that the effect of the cues were simultaneously interactive during trust judgments, and the effect of facial expression would be susceptible to social context, while the effect of facial gender would be stable in different settings
There was a significant interaction between facial expression and facial gender
Summary
Trustworthiness judgments can be made at first glance. Individuals usually make trustworthiness judgments of strangers based on facial cues, such us facial expression and facial gender (Atkinson et al, 2005; Buchan et al, 2008; Aguado et al, 2009; Todorov et al, 2009; Willis and Todorov, 2010; Dong et al, 2014). Trustworthiness Judgments in Social Settings effect of facial gender on trustworthiness judgments (Buchan et al, 2008), found that female faces were usually perceived as more trustworthy than male faces It remains unclear, whether the processing of these two cues occurs independently (Haxby et al, 2000, 2002), or is simultaneously interactive (Hess et al, 2000; Atkinson et al, 2005; Aguado et al, 2009; Ozono et al, 2010; Dong et al, 2014; Hack, 2014). In light of EASI, in cooperative settings, individuals are more likely to use an emotional response to process the emotional information, while in competitive settings, individuals may be more likely to use the inference processing pathway to process the emotional information of others This suggests that the influence of others’ emotions on our judgments may depend on the specific social context. Based on previous literature (e.g., Hack, 2014), we hypothesized that the effect of the cues were simultaneously interactive during trust judgments, and the effect of facial expression would be susceptible to social context, while the effect of facial gender would be stable in different settings
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