Cross-cultural consensus in personality judgments

Capturing Behavior in Small Doses: A Review of Comparative Research in Evaluating Thin Slices for Behavioral Measurement

Thin slices are used across a wide array of research domains to observe, measure, and predict human behavior. This article reviews the thin-slice method as a measurement technique and summarizes current comparative thin-slice research regarding the reliability and validity of thin slices to represent behavior or social constructs. We outline decision factors in using thin-slice behavioral coding and detail three avenues of thin-slice comparative research: (1) assessing whether thin slices can adequately approximate the total of the recorded behavior or be interchangeable with each other (representativeness); (2) assessing how well thin slices can predict variables that are different from the behavior measured in the slice (predictive validity), and (3) assessing how interpersonal judgment accuracy can depend on the length of the slice (accuracy-length validity). The aim of the review is to provide information researchers may use when designing and evaluating thin-slice behavioral measurement.

Dynamic interactive theory as a domain-general account of social perception

The perception of social categories, emotions, and personality traits from others' faces each have been studied extensively but in relative isolation. We synthesize emerging findings suggesting that, in each of these domains of social perception, both a variety of bottom-up facial features and top-down social cognitive processes play a part in driving initial perceptions. Among such top-down processes, social-conceptual knowledge in particular can have a fundamental structuring role in how we perceive others' faces. Extending the Dynamic Interactive framework (Freeman & Ambady, 2011), we outline a perspective whereby the perception of social categories, emotions, and traits from faces can all be conceived as emerging from an integrated system relying on domain-general cognitive properties. Such an account of social perception would envision perceptions to be a rapid, but gradual, process of negotiation between the variety of visual cues inherent to a person and the social cognitive knowledge an individual perceiver brings to the perceptual process. We describe growing evidence in support of this perspective as well as its theoretical implications for social psychology.

Forming social impressions from voices in native and foreign languages

We form very rapid personality impressions about speakers on hearing a single word. This implies that the acoustical properties of the voice (e.g., pitch) are very powerful cues when forming social impressions. Here, we aimed to explore how personality impressions for brief social utterances transfer across languages and whether acoustical properties play a similar role in driving personality impressions. Additionally, we examined whether evaluations are similar in the native and a foreign language of the listener. In two experiments we asked Spanish listeners to evaluate personality traits from different instances of the Spanish word "Hola" (Experiment 1) and the English word "Hello" (Experiment 2), native and foreign language respectively. The results revealed that listeners across languages form very similar personality impressions irrespective of whether the voices belong to the native or the foreign language of the listener. A social voice space was summarized by two main personality traits, one emphasizing valence (e.g., trust) and the other strength (e.g., dominance). Conversely, the acoustical properties that listeners pay attention to when judging other's personality vary across languages. These results provide evidence that social voice perception contains certain elements invariant across cultures/languages, while others are modulated by the cultural/linguistic background of the listener.

Impressions of sexual unfaithfulness and their accuracy show a degree of universality

Forming accurate impressions of others’ trustworthiness is a critical social skill, with faithfulness representing a key aspect of trust in sexual relationships. Interestingly, there is evidence for a small degree of accuracy in facial impressions of sexual unfaithfulness. Theoretical accounts suggest that these impressions may function to help with partner selection, and may be universal. If so, impressions should be similar for perceivers from different cultures and accuracy should not be limited to own-race faces. We tested these predictions by asking Caucasian and Asian women to judge the likelihood of unfaithfulness from the faces of Caucasian males whose past sexual history was known. In two studies we found high cross-cultural agreement in these impressions, consistent with universality in the impressions themselves. In Study 1, we found an other-race effect in impression accuracy, with significantly less accurate cross-race impressions by Asian women than own-race impressions by Caucasian women. Asian women showed no accuracy. Interestingly, in Study 2, Asian women who had grown up in the West showed small but significant accuracy in their impressions, with no other-race effect. Results are consistent with a degree of universality in the accuracy of this important aspect of social perception, provided that perceivers have experience with the faces being assessed.

Glued to Which Face? Attentional Priority Effect of Female Babyface and Male Mature Face

A more babyfaced individual is perceived as more child-like and this impression from babyface, as known as babyface effect, has an impact on social life among various age groups. In this study, the influence of babyfaces on visual selective attention was tested by cognitive task, demonstrating that the female babyface and male mature face would draw participants’ attention so that they take their eyes off more slowly. In Experiment 1, a detection task was applied to test the influence of babyfaces on visual selective attention. In this experiment, a babyface and a mature face with the same gender were presented simultaneously with a letter on one of them. The reaction time was shorter when the target letter was overlaid with a female babyface or male mature face, suggesting an attention capture effect. To explore how this competition influenced by attentional resources, we conducted Experiment 2 with a spatial cueing paradigm and controlled the attentional resources by cueing validity and inter-stimulus interval. In this task, the female babyface and male mature face prolonged responses to the spatially separated targets under the condition of an invalid and long interval pre-cue. This observation replicated the result of Experiment 1. This indicates that the female babyface and male mature face glued visual selective attention once attentional resources were directed to them. To further investigate the subliminal influence from a babyface, we used continuous flash suppression paradigm in Experiment 3. The results, again, showed the advantage of the female babyfaces and male mature faces: they broke the suppression faster than other faces. Our results provide primary evidence that the female babyfaces and male mature faces can reliably glue the visual selective attention, both supra- and sub-liminally.

Cultural effects on the association between election outcomes and face-based trait inferences

How competent a politician looks, as assessed in the laboratory, is correlated with whether the politician wins in real elections. This finding has led many to investigate whether the association between candidate appearances and election outcomes transcends cultures. However, these studies have largely focused on European countries and Caucasian candidates. To the best of our knowledge, there are only four cross-cultural studies that have directly investigated how face-based trait inferences correlate with election outcomes across Caucasian and Asian cultures. These prior studies have provided some initial evidence regarding cultural differences, but methodological problems and inconsistent findings have complicated our understanding of how culture mediates the effects of candidate appearances on election outcomes. Additionally, these four past studies have focused on positive traits, with a relative neglect of negative traits, resulting in an incomplete picture of how culture may impact a broader range of trait inferences. To study Caucasian-Asian cultural effects with a more balanced experimental design, and to explore a more complete profile of traits, here we compared how Caucasian and Korean participants’ inferences of positive and negative traits correlated with U.S. and Korean election outcomes. Contrary to previous reports, we found that inferences of competence (made by participants from both cultures) correlated with both U.S. and Korean election outcomes. Inferences of open-mindedness and threat, two traits neglected in previous cross-cultural studies, were correlated with Korean but not U.S. election outcomes. This differential effect was found in trait judgments made by both Caucasian and Korean participants. Interestingly, the faster the participants made face-based trait inferences, the more strongly those inferences were correlated with real election outcomes. These findings provide new insights into cultural effects and the difficult question of causality underlying the association between facial inferences and election outcomes. We also discuss the implications for political science and cognitive psychology.

High Power Distance Enhances Employees' Preference for Likable Managers: A Resource Dependency Perspective

Is a manager's likability important from an employee's perspective? Research results in this field are scant and inconsistent. The current study explored employees' response to managers' likability and the moderating effect of power distance at both the cultural and individual levels. In study 1, following the countercultural priming experimental paradigm proposed by Van den Bos et al. (2013), 121 college students from China (a high power distance culture) and 99 college students from Denmark (a low power distance culture) were randomly assigned to either a countercultural (experimental) condition or a control condition. All participants were required to complete a manager selection task using the zero-acquaintance paradigm to measure their preference for likable managers. The results confirmed the moderating role of power distance at the cultural level. Study 2 further explored the moderating effect of power distance orientation at the individual level, as well as the boundary condition of the degree of resource dependence from the employee's perspective. One hundred and three Chinese participants with work experience were randomly assigned to either the subordinate perspective (high resource dependence) or the HR department perspective (low resource dependence) condition and completed the same task as in study 1. The results suggested that high power distance-oriented participants demonstrate stronger preference for likable manager candidates than do low power distance-oriented participants. In addition, these findings hold only when employees expect a high resource dependence relation with the manager. Theoretical and practical implications of the research findings and future research directions were discussed.

What's in the Chinese Babyface? Cultural Differences in Understanding the Babyface

We investigated the cultural differences in understanding and reacting to the babyface in an effort to identify both cultural and gender biases in the universal hypothesis that the babyfaced individuals are perceived as naïve, cute, innocent, and more trustworthy. Sixty-six Chinese and Sixty-six American participants were required to evaluate Chinese faces selected from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)—Pose, Expression, Accessories, and Lighting (PEAL) Large-Scale Chinese Face Database. In our study, we applied Active Shape Models, a modern technique of machine learning to measure facial features. We found some cultural similarities and also found that a Chinese babyface has bigger eyes, higher eyebrows, a smaller chin, and greater WHR (Facial width-to-height ratio), and looks more attractive and warmer. New findings demonstrate that Chinese babyfaces have a lower forehead and closer pupil distance (PD). We found that when evaluating the babyfacedness of a face, Chinese are more concerned with the combination of all facial features and American are more sensitive to specific highlighted babyfaced features. The Chinese babyface tended to be perceived as more babyfaced for American participants, but not less competent for Chinese participants.

The dual nature of the human face: there is a little Jekyll and a little Hyde in all of us

The fact that a mere glance makes it possible to extract a wealth of information about the person being observed is testament to both the salience of the human face and the brain's high efficiency in processing this information. Prior work has revealed that social judgments of faces are determined by facial features that vary on two orthogonal dimensions: trustworthiness and dominance. We conducted two experiments to investigate the visual information subtending trustworthiness and dominance judgments. In Experiment 1, we used the Bubbles technique to identify the facial areas and the spatial frequencies that modulate these two judgments. Our results show that the eye and mouth areas in high-to-medium spatial frequency bands were positively correlated with judgments of trustworthiness; the eyebrows region in medium-to-low frequency bands was positively correlated with judgments of dominance; and the lower left jawbone in medium-to-low frequency bands was negatively correlated with judgments of dominance. In Experiment 2, we used the results of Experiment 1 to induce subtle variations in the relative contrast of different facial areas, and showed that it is possible to rig social perception using such a manipulation.

Culture, gender and health care stigma: Practitioners' response to facial masking experienced by people with Parkinson's disease

Facial masking in Parkinson's disease is the reduction of automatic and controlled expressive movement of facial musculature, creating an appearance of apathy, social disengagement or compromised cognitive status. Research in western cultures demonstrates that practitioners form negatively biased impressions associated with patient masking. Socio-cultural norms about facial expressivity vary according to culture and gender, yet little research has studied the effect of these factors on practitioners' responses toward patients who vary in facial expressivity. This study evaluated the effect of masking, culture and gender on practitioners' impressions of patient psychological attributes. Practitioners (N = 284) in the United States and Taiwan judged 12 Caucasian American and 12 Asian Taiwanese women and men patients in video clips from interviews. Half of each patient group had a moderate degree of facial masking and the other half had near-normal expressivity. Practitioners in both countries judged patients with higher masking to be more depressed and less sociable, less socially supportive, and less cognitively competent than patients with lower masking. Practitioners were more biased by masking when judging the sociability of the American patients, and American practitioners' judgments of patient sociability were more negatively biased in response to masking than were those of Taiwanese practitioners. Practitioners were more biased by masking when judging the cognitive competence and social supportiveness of the Taiwanese patients, and Taiwanese practitioners' judgments of patient cognitive competence were more negatively biased in response to masking than were those of American practitioners. The negative response to higher masking was stronger in practitioner judgments of women than men patients, particularly American patients. The findings suggest local cultural values as well as ethnic and gender stereotypes operate on practitioners' use of facial expressivity in clinical impression formation.

Voting behavior is reflected in amygdala response across cultures

Voting to determine one's leaders is among the most important decisions we make, yet little is known about the brain's role in how we come to these decisions. Behavioral studies have indicated that snap judgments of political candidates' faces can predict election outcomes but that the traits that lead to these judgments differ across cultures. Here we sought to investigate the neural basis for these judgments. American and Japanese natives performed simulated voting judgments of actual American and Japanese political candidates while neural activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Candidates for whom participants chose to vote elicited stronger responses in the bilateral amygdala than candidates for whom participants chose not to vote. This was true regardless of either the participant's culture or the target's culture, suggesting that these voting decisions provoked the same neural response cross-culturally. In addition, we observed a participant culture by target culture interaction in the bilateral amygdala. American and Japanese participants both showed a stronger response to cultural outgroup faces than they did to cultural in group faces, however this was unrelated to their voting decisions. These data provide insight to the mechanisms that underlie our snap judgments of others when making voting decisions and provide a neural correlate to cross-cultural consensus in social inferences.