Abstract
Facial trustworthiness and feedback information of trustees can influence trustors’ investment behavior in trust games. This study investigated the temporal features of outcome evaluation (evaluation of feedback) and how they influence the processing of facial trustworthiness. A total of 25 college students participated in a decision-making task in which feedback was presented prior to a face stimulus. The decision of participants to continue investing was evaluated. We observed that trustors were more inclined to keep investing in trustworthy trustees or those appearing after positive feedback (gains). Event-related potential (ERP) results revealed that in the face presentation stage, trustworthy faces with losses induced more negative feedback-related negativity (FRN) than did trustworthy faces with gains and untrustworthy faces with losses. Further, faces that did not meet expectations induced more negative FRN. Trustworthy faces with gains induced more positive late positive component (LPC) than did trustworthy faces with losses and generated more motivated attention. Bottom–up and top–down processes were integrated for facial trustworthiness perception at different stages. In sum, top–down processing exerted a greater impact during the early stage of facial trustworthiness perception, both top–down and bottom–up processing were involved in the medium term, and bottom–up processing exerted a greater impact in the later stage.
Highlights
Facial trustworthiness perception is a face-based trait inference process that refers to the evaluation of others’ trustworthiness based on their faces
Simple effects analysis revealed that when the trustee reciprocated, the proportion of participants continuing to invest in trustworthy faces (87.3 ± 12.5%) was significantly higher than that for untrustworthy faces (33.2% ± 22.0%; t(24) = 12.537, p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 2.506)
Event-Related Potential Analysis of Feedback P200 and feedbackrelated negativity (FRN) were induced during the feedback presentation stage
Summary
Facial trustworthiness perception is a face-based trait inference process that refers to the evaluation of others’ trustworthiness based on their faces. The perception of facial trustworthiness is a fast process; individuals can judge the trustworthiness of a face when it appears for 33 ms (Todorov et al, 2009). Judging the trustworthiness of a stranger’s face is a spontaneous process (Klapper et al, 2016) that does not require effort of will (Bonnefon et al, 2013). This perceptual feature of facial trustworthiness is of great significance for the survival and development of humans.
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