Trait Judgments Research Articles

Comparing ChatGPT with human judgements of social traits from face photographs

Comparing ChatGPT with human judgements of social traits from face photographs

Trait judgments of medieval Japanese illustrated portraits.

Psychological studies have revealed that people can easily draw inferences regarding others' personal traits from their faces, which has a considerable impact on social decisions. Impressions from faces can be summarized into two orthogonal dimensions: valence and dominance. Owing to their prominence in social relationships, faces appear in paintings across all ages and cultures. These observations lead to the question of whether the structure of trait impressions from illustrated portraits is similar to that of real faces. To examine this issue, we collected trait ratings of illustrated portraits of historical individuals from old Japanese artwork. In the Study 1 section, we applied a principal component analysis to 13 traits by Japanese raters and observed two orthogonal dimensions consistent with the valence and dominance model; the first component was correlated with trustworthiness but not with dominance, while the second component was correlated with dominance but not with trustworthiness. In the Study 2 section, we collected the trait ratings of real faces by Japanese raters and directly assessed the similarity between the two components. Highly similar structures were observed for the illustrated and real faces. Our findings provide evidence that portraits of historical individuals were painted to convey distinctive impressions of trustworthiness and dominance. This suggests that these traits were fundamental dimensions of people's perception in medieval Japan similar to today's society.

The effect of contributing cause for wrongful conviction on trait ascriptions and hypothetical hiring judgments

ABSTRACT There is a dearth of work investigating how the attribution for wrongful conviction (e.g. false confession, misidentification) may influence perceptions of exonerees. The current work aimed to elucidate patterns of bias against exonerees with downstream consequences for equitable employment opportunities. We hypothesized that the contributing cause for wrongful conviction would impact trait judgments, job fit impressions, and hiring judgments (i.e. starting wage, hiring decision). Specifically, we anticipated that an exoneree who falsely confessed would be most negatively evaluated, followed by an exoneree who was misidentified, followed by an individual with no criminal history. Lay participants recruited online (N = 292) read a job application from either (a) a false confession exoneree, (b) a misidentified exoneree, or (c) an individual with no criminal history before making trait, employment qualification, and hiring judgments. Participants rated the false confession exoneree more negatively than the misidentified exoneree and the individual with no criminal history (which did not differ from one another) on trait judgments, job fit impressions, and hiring decision. The current work expands literature on negative judgments of exonerees who falsely confess and suggests that the contributing cause for wrongful conviction may be an important consideration when examining discriminatory treatment toward exonerees.

Judgment of Social Traits and Emotions of "Neutral" Avatars.

With the rapid advance of technology, human interactions with virtual avatars in simulated social environments are becoming increasingly common. The aim of the current study was to examine users' perception of social traits and emotions of "neutral," expressionless avatars using an open-source collection. These avatars represented different ethnicities, genders, and occupations via visual features including skin tone, facial structure, and apparel. We hypothesized that the social evaluation of "neutral" avatars would be influenced by these visual features. In two online studies, we asked survey participants (N = 225) to identify and rate the social traits and determine the expressed emotion of avatars. Female avatars were rated more attractive, trustworthy, friendly, and less aggressive than male avatars. Black avatars were rated more attractive, friendly, and trustworthy in comparison to White avatars. Avatars in martial uniforms were rated as more aggressive and less friendly than avatars in non-martial uniforms. In turn, non-martial uniformed avatars were rated higher in trustworthiness and intelligence than avatars in martial uniforms and avatars without uniforms. These results suggest that users attribute social traits and emotions to "neutral" avatars. These findings have implications for the design of tasks and products that rely on the selection of avatars in virtual reality.

Do young and older adult populations perform equivalently across different automatic face-trait judgements? Evidence for differential impacts of ageing.

Accurate implicit personality trait judgements can be made from faces, but as yet the focus has been on young participants making judgements of young faces. The current study sought to explore if similar patterns of performance are seen across the age range, with both young and older adult groups. In addition, we investigated whether implicit trait judgements are associated with cognitive, and trait factors including face recognition, emotional expression perception, autism traits, and alexithymia traits. Across two experiments we explored the extent to which young and older adult populations were able to make accurate implicit associations from faces signalling two different traits - extraversion (positive) and neuroticism (negative). Interestingly, we find that young participants were accurate at making both kinds of automatic trait judgments, and older adults were equivalent to younger controls for the neuroticism personality trait but impaired with automatic extraversion judgements. In both studies, implicit associations were unrelated to any of the other cognitive and trait factors we measured. Based on this pattern of findings, we conclude that face-based implicit trait judgements utilise some independent processes to other face processing abilities, and that the interpretation of particular personality traits is differentially impacted by the ageing process.

Review on the Relationship between Facial Features and Social Perception

Faces are an important visual source for individuals to make social perceptual judgments, and face features can influence others' judgments of individuals' personality traits, emotional states etc. Therefore, social perception judgment based on face features has adaptive significance. This paper firstly introduces the basic relationship between facial features and social perception and its importance in social psychology; then it reviews in detail the progress and development of domestic and international research on the influence of facial features on social perception from the aspects of biological features of faces and social features of faces, and compares the advantages and disadvantages of different methods; finally, it analyzes and looks forward to the problems and development of the influence of facial features on social perception. The effect of facial features on social perception is a complex and multilevel process, and understanding this process not only helps individuals to understand the nature of human social behavior, but also provides theoretical support for applied research in related fields.

How trait impressions of faces shape subsequent mental state inferences.

People form impressions of one another in a split second from faces. However, people also infer others' momentary mental states on the basis of context-for example, one might infer that somebody feels encouraged from the fact that they are receiving constructive feedback. How do trait judgements of faces influence these context-based mental state inferences? In this Registered Report, we asked participants to infer the mental states of unfamiliar people, identified by their neutral faces, under specific contexts. To increase generalizability, we representatively sampled all stimuli from inclusive sets using computational methods. We tested four hypotheses: that trait impressions of faces (1) are correlated with subsequent mental state inferences in a range of contexts, (2) alter the dimensional space that underlies mental state inferences, (3) are associated with specific mental state dimensions in this space and (4) causally influence mental state inferences. We found evidence in support of all hypotheses.

A Constant Error, Revisited: A New Explanation of the Halo Effect.

Judgments of character traits tend to be overcorrelated, a bias known as the halo effect. We conducted two studies to test an explanation of the effect based on shared lexical context and connotation. Study 1 tested whether the context similarity of trait names could explain 39 participants' ratings of the probability that two traits would co-occur. Over 126 trait pairs, cosine similarity between the word2vec vectors of the two words was a reliable predictor of the human judgments of trait co-occurrence probability (cross-validated r2 =.19, p <.001). Two measures related to word similarity increased the variation accounted for in the human judgments to 45%, cross-validated (p <.001). In Experiment 2, 40 different participants judged similarity of word meaning within the pairs, confirming that the word pairs were not simply synonymous (Average [SD] = 40.8/100 [13.1/100]). Shared lexical context and word connotation play a role in shaping the halo effect.

Symmetrical choices and biased confidence during uncertain personality trait judgments.

While great methodological strides have been made in the area of decision making research, decisions that rely on subjective stimuli, such as personality traits, still pose a challenge for researchers, partly because it is difficult to define a standard of accuracy for such choices-they lack a "ground truth". In studies on value-based decisions, this same problem has been circumvented by comparing uncertain subjective decisions against a separately assessed judgment of value-a "standard". Here we apply this method in a task of verbal personality trait judgment, and show how a separately assessed standard judgment can be used to precisely control stimulus presentation and analyze subjective personality choices via the method of reverse correlation. Per trial, a series of quasi-randomly sampled adjectives was shown, which participants categorized as more descriptive of either themselves of another person well known to them. Participants also indicated their confidence in the response. Each trial's difficulty was controlled based on the previously assessed standard judgment. Analysis of the behavioral data shows several decision-general properties during these personality judgments, such as symmetrical choices, steeper choice functions for confident trials, and a positive evidence bias during confidence judgment. We discuss how these findings can shed light on the cognitive processes involved in personality perception. The task and results together may help bridge the gap between research on complex, social forms of judgment and findings on more basic decision processes.

No evidence for an other-race effect in dominance and trustworthy judgements from faces.

A variety of evidence shows that social categorization of people based on their race can lead to stereotypical judgements and prejudicial behaviour. Here, we explore the extent to which trait judgements of faces are influenced by race. To address this issue, we measured the reliability of first impressions for own-race and other-race faces in Asian and White participants. Participants viewed pairs of faces and were asked to indicate which of the two faces was more dominant or which of the two faces was more trustworthy. We measured the consistency (or reliability) of these judgements across participants for own-race and other-races faces. We found that judgements of dominance or trustworthiness showed similar levels of reliability for own-race and other-race faces. Moreover, an item analysis showed that the judgements on individual trials were very similar across participants from different races. Next, participants made overall ratings of dominance and trustworthiness from own-race and other-race faces. Again, we found that there was no evidence for an ORE. Together, these results provide a new approach to measuring trait judgements of faces and show that in these conditions there is no ORE for the perception of dominance and trustworthiness.

Atypical neural encoding of faces in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience pervasive difficulties in processing social information from faces. However, the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying social trait judgments of faces in ASD remain largely unclear. Here, we comprehensively addressed this question by employing functional neuroimaging and parametrically generated faces that vary in facial trustworthiness and dominance. Behaviorally, participants with ASD exhibited reduced specificity but increased inter-rater variability in social trait judgments. Neurally, participants with ASD showed hypo-activation across broad face-processing areas. Multivariate analysis based on trial-by-trial face responses could discriminate participant groups in the majority of the face-processing areas. Encoding social traits in ASD engaged vastly different face-processing areas compared to controls, and encoding different social traits engaged different brain areas. Interestingly, the idiosyncratic brain areas encoding social traits in ASD were still flexible and context-dependent, similar to neurotypicals. Additionally, participants with ASD also showed an altered encoding of facial saliency features in the eyes and mouth. Together, our results provide a comprehensive understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying social trait judgments in ASD.

Differences in the link between social trait judgment and socio-emotional experience in neurotypical and autistic individuals

Neurotypical (NT) individuals and individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) make different judgments of social traits from others’ faces; they also exhibit different social emotional responses in social interactions. A common hypothesis is that the differences in face perception in ASD compared with NT is related to distinct social behaviors. To test this hypothesis, we combined a face trait judgment task with a novel interpersonal transgression task that induces measures social emotions and behaviors. ASD and neurotypical participants viewed a large set of naturalistic facial stimuli while judging them on a comprehensive set of social traits (e.g., warm, charismatic, critical). They also completed an interpersonal transgression task where their responsibility in causing an unpleasant outcome to a social partner was manipulated. The purpose of the latter task was to measure participants’ emotional (e.g., guilt) and behavioral (e.g., compensation) responses to interpersonal transgression. We found that, compared with neurotypical participants, ASD participants’ self-reported guilt and compensation tendency was less sensitive to our responsibility manipulation. Importantly, ASD participants and neurotypical participants showed distinct associations between self-reported guilt and judgments of criticalness from others' faces. These findings reveal a novel link between perception of social traits and social emotional responses in ASD.

Effective English teachers in online EFL learning: A post-pandemic reflection on students’ perspectives

In the framework of conventional academic settings, there have been a large number of studies on the qualities of effective teachers; however, studies in the context of online environments seem to be scarcely documented in the literature. This explanatory sequential mixed-method study of 224 secondary school students, 21 of whom were interviewed in detail, examined their perspectives on effective teacher characteristics in online EFL instruction. This study differed from earlier investigations of the qualities of effective teachers in terms of its research site and inquiry emphasis. The results of the surveys and interviews provided students’ judgments of effective teacher traits in terms of roles, professional abilities, personal qualities, and pedagogical expertise. According to the results of the polls, the most significant criteria for effective online learning management were instructors’ classroom management roles and their professional skills. The interviews stressed the importance of teachers’ qualities in managing classrooms and their pedagogical knowledge. In an online EFL instruction, students needed their teachers to scaffold them and explain what they should do with the lesson and the procedures they should follow for activities and assignments. In addition, the interviews validated teachers’ capacity to establish a favorable rapport with the students to facilitate their meaningful learning. As this study identified teachers’ professional abilities in managing online learning as a requirement, an online-learning-based professional development program for teachers is highly recommended as the most plausible alternative for the post-pandemic reflection of this current study.

Voice-based judgments of sex, height, weight, attractiveness, health, and psychological traits based on free speech versus scripted speech.

How do we perceive others based on their voices? This question has attracted research and media attention for decades, producing hundreds of studies showing that the voice is socially and biologically relevant, but these studies vary in methodology and ecological validity. Here we test whether vocalizers producing read versus free speech are judged similarly by listeners on ten biological and/or psychosocial traits. In perception experiments using speech from 208 men and women and ratings from 4,088 listeners, we show that listeners' assessments of vocalizer sex and age are highly accurate, regardless of speech type. Assessments ofbody size, femininity-masculinity and women'shealth also did not differ between free and read speech. In contrast, read speech elicited higher ratings of attractiveness, dominanceand trustworthiness in both sexes and of health in males compared tofree speech. Importantly, these differences were small, and we additionally show moderate to strong correlations between ratings of the same vocalizers based on their read and free speech for all ten traits, indicating that voice-based judgments are highly consistent within speakers, whether or not speech is spontaneous. Our results provide evidence that the human voice can communicate various biological and psychosocial traits via both read and free speech, with theoretical and practical implications.

Morally "loaded" labels in the built environment influence perceptions and social judgments.

Products and artifacts with morally loaded labels (e.g., environmentally friendly) appear to influence people's perceptions and behaviors. Previous studies have shown that desktop lamps labeled "environmentally friendly" can enhance perceived color discrimination and improve certain reading activities compared to a physically identical lamp labeled "conventional." This effect may occur because people tend to align their behavior with moral principles. The present study explored the generalizability and robustness of this label effect by asking participants to make trait judgments of photographed faces. In an experimental design, participants evaluated photos illuminated by a desktop lamp that was either labeled environmentally friendly or not labeled at all. The results revealed that participants assigned more positive traits to individuals in the photographs when the lamp was labeled "environmentally friendly," particularly those with high altruistic values. The pattern was reversed for participants with low altruistic values. Moreover, participants rated the light from the lamp labeled "environmentally friendly" as more comfortable and claimed that the light increased (perceived) visibility. In conclusion, the source of the light-whether from an environmentally friendly or conventional lamp-affects both the evaluation of the light itself and the judgments made about other individuals. This study explores theoretical explanations for these label effects and discusses their potential implications for pro-environmental interventions.

The impact of the use of masks on trait judgments and face recognition.

Although effective in reducing virus transmission, face masks might compromise face recognition and trait judgments. With this study, we aimed to observe the influence of masks on face recognition and trait judgments-more specifically, in trustworthiness, dominance, and distinctiveness judgments. Also, we wanted to observe the possible influence of trait judgments on facial recognition for masked and unmasked faces, which has never been done before. For that, we conducted an online study where 140 participants observed and made trait judgments of masked and unmasked faces in a within-subjects design. After a distractive task, participants performed a recognition memory test. As expected, we observed a better recognition of faces shown without a mask during the study phase, which allowed the holistic processing of the faces. The worst performance was found for faces encoded with a mask but tested without it, occurring simultaneity disruption in holistic face processing and the violation of the encoding specificity principle. Regarding the trait judgments, unmasked faces were considered more distinctive, and masked faces were considered more trustworthy. More interestingly, we can conclude that facial distinctiveness predicts face recognition, regardless of mask use. In contrast, dominance judgments only predicted face recognition when faces were presented without a mask. When faces were exposed with masks, trustworthiness overrides dominance, becoming more critical to recognizing faces. We can interpret these results from an evolutionary perspective.

Multimodal investigations of emotional face processing and social trait judgment of faces.

Faces are among the most important visual stimuli that humans perceive in everyday life. While extensive literature has examined emotional processing and social evaluations of faces, most studies have examined either topic using unimodal approaches. In this review, we promote the use of multimodal cognitive neuroscience approaches to study these processes, using two lines of research as examples: ambiguity in facial expressions of emotion and social trait judgment of faces. In the first set of studies, we identified an event-related potential that signals emotion ambiguity using electroencephalography and we found convergent neural responses to emotion ambiguity using functional neuroimaging and single-neuron recordings. In the second set of studies, we discuss how different neuroimaging and personality-dimensional approaches together provide new insights into social trait judgments of faces. In both sets of studies, we provide an in-depth comparison between neurotypicals and people with autism spectrum disorder. We offer a computational account for the behavioral and neural markers of the different facial processing between the two groups. Finally, we suggest new practices for studying the emotional processing and social evaluations of faces. All data discussed in the case studies of this review are publicly available.

A Sense of Scarcity Enhances the Above-Average Effect in Social Comparison.

Scarcity refers to a state in which an individual's resources do not satisfy his/her needs. A sense of scarcity evokes negative emotions. A fundamental strategy for coping with this negative threat is for people to emphasize the desirability of their personal traits. In this study, a 2 (sense of scarcity: high or low) × 2 (valence: positive or negative) mixed-design experiment was conducted to examine whether and how a sense of scarcity affected one's self-evaluation. Participants were assigned randomly to a high- or low-scarcity group. The chances of assistance rendered to an individual during a word puzzle task were manipulated to induce a high or low sense of scarcity. Then, participants were asked to make positive and negative trait judgments of themselves compared with their average peers. The results showed that people judged their personalities to be more desirable (i.e., more positive and less negative traits) than their average peers, manifesting the above-average effect. More importantly, people with a high sense of scarcity manifested a greater above-average effect than those with a low sense of scarcity. This study suggests that people could highlight their positive aspects to cope with predicaments in social life.

Comprehensive Social Trait Judgments From Faces in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Processing social information from faces is difficult for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, it remains unclear whether individuals with ASD make high-level social trait judgments from faces in the same way as neurotypical individuals. Here, we comprehensively addressed this question using naturalistic face images and representatively sampled traits. Despite similar underlying dimensional structures across traits, online adult participants with self-reported ASD showed different judgments and reduced specificity within each trait compared with neurotypical individuals. Deep neural networks revealed that these group differences were driven by specific types of faces and differential utilization of features within a face. Our results were replicated in well-characterized in-lab participants and partially generalized to more controlled face images (a preregistered study). By investigating social trait judgments in a broader population, including individuals with neurodevelopmental variations, we found important theoretical implications for the fundamental dimensions, variations, and potential behavioral consequences of social cognition.

Three's a crowd: Fast ensemble perception of first impressions of trustworthiness

Trustworthiness impressions are fundamental social judgements with far-reaching consequences in many aspects of society, including criminal justice, leadership selection and partner preferences. Thus far, most research has focused on facial characteristics that make a face individually appear more or less trustworthy. However, in everyday life, faces are not always perceived in isolation but are often encountered in crowds. It has been proposed that we deal with the large amount of facial information in a group by extracting summary statistics of the crowd, a phenomenon called ensemble perception. Prior research showed that ensemble perception occurs for various facial features, such as emotional expression, facial identity, and attractiveness. Here, we investigated whether observers can integrate the level of trustworthiness from multiple faces to extract an average impression of the crowd. Across four studies, participants were presented with crowds of faces and were asked to report their average level of trustworthiness with an adjustment (Experiment 1) and a rating task (Experiments 2 and 3). Participants were able to extract an ensemble perception of trustworthiness impressions from multiple faces. Moreover, observers were able to form a summary statistic of trustworthiness impressions from a group of faces as quickly as 250 ms (Experiment 4). Taken together, these results demonstrate that ensemble perception can occur at the level of impressions of trustworthiness. Thus, these critical social judgements not only occur for individual faces but are also integrated into a unique ensemble impression of crowds. Our findings contribute to the development of a more ecological approach to the study of trust impressions, since they provide an understanding of trustworthiness judgements not only on an individual level, but on a much broader social group level. Furthermore, our results drive forward new theory because they demonstrate for the first time that ensemble representations cover a broad range of phenomena than previously recognized, including complex high-level facial trait judgements such as trustworthiness impressions.