Accurate social perception at zero acquaintance: the affordances of a Gibsonian approach

Affective Responses Mediate the Body Language of Penalty Taker - Decision-Making Relationship from Soccer Goalkeepers

Purpose: Previous studies have shown that penalty-takers' body language affects the impressions that goalkeepers form about them and their anticipation performance. This research aimed to replicate these results and test the mediating effect of threat/challenge responses on the relationship between impression formation and the quality of goalkeeper decision-making. Methods and Results: We report 2 experiments. The first showed that participants (goalkeepers) form more positive impressions and have a lower expectation of success from dominant penalty-takers than submissive penalty-takers, and the second showed under pressure conditions that goalkeepers' decision-making was significantly less accurate against dominant players than against submissive players. In addition, we found that the more goalkeepers perceived the penalty-taker as competent, the more threatened they felt; conversely, the less they perceived the penalty-taker as competent, the more challenged they felt. Conclusion: Finally, our analysis showed that participants' cognitive appraisal (challenge vs. threat) influenced the quality of their decision-making and played a partial mediating role in the relationship between impression formation and decision-making.

Preliminary evidence for neck musculature in shaping functional stereotypes of men's relationship motives

Neck musculature is reliably diagnostic of men's formidability and central to several inferences of their physical prowess. These inferences facilitate stereotypes of men's social value from which perceivers estimate their abilities to satisfy reproductive goals related to mate acquisition and parental care. Participants evaluated men's interest in various mating and parenting strategies, wherein men varied in the size of visible neck musculature through trapezii and sternocleidomastoids for perceivers to identify potential reproductive interests and goals. Large trapezii elicited perceptions of men as more effective at protecting offspring, albeit at the expense of nurturance and interest in long-term pair bonds. Results extend previous findings implicating formidability as central to relationship decisions by considering a novel modality.

Attractiveness Differentially Affects Direct Versus Indirect Face Evaluations in Two Cultures

Although decades of research have identified facial features relating to people's evaluations of faces, specific features have largely been examined in isolation from each other. Recent work shows that considering the relative importance of these features in face evaluations is important to test theoretical assumptions of impression formation. Here, we examined how two facial features of evolutionary interest, facial attractiveness and facial-width-to-height ratio (FWHR), relate to evaluations of faces across two cultures. Because face evaluations are typically directly measured via self-reports, we also examined whether these features exert differential effects on both direct and indirect face evaluations. Evaluations of standardized photos naturally varying in facial attractiveness and FWHR were collected using the Affect Misattribution Procedure in the United States and Turkey. When their relative contributions were considered in the same model, facial attractiveness, but not FWHR, related to face evaluations across cultures. This positive attractiveness effect was stronger for direct versus indirect evaluations across cultures. These findings highlight the importance of considering the relative contributions of facial features to evaluations across cultures and suggest a culturally invariant role of attractiveness when intentionally evaluating faces.

Hits and Misses: Digital Contact Tracing in a Pandemic

Traditional contact tracing is one of the most powerful weapons people have in the battle against a pandemic, especially when vaccines do not yet exist or do not afford complete protection from infection. But the effectiveness of contact tracing hinges on its ability to find infected people quickly and obtain accurate information from them. Therefore, contact tracing inherits the challenges associated with the fallibilities of memory. Against this backdrop, digital contact tracing is the "dream scenario"-an unobtrusive, vigilant, and accurate recorder of danger that should outperform manual contact tracing on every dimension. There is reason to celebrate the success of digital contact tracing. Indeed, epidemiologists report that digital contact tracing probably reduced the incidence of COVID-19 cases by at least 25% in many countries, a feat that would have been hard to match with its manual counterpart. Yet there is also reason to speculate that digital contact tracing delivered on only a fraction of its potential because it almost completely ignored the relevant psychological science. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of digital contact tracing, its hits and misses in the COVID-19 pandemic, and its need to be integrated with the science of human behavior.

Not Just About Faces in Context: Face-Context Relation Moderates the Impact of Contextual Threat on Facial Trustworthiness

Recent work showed that the attribution of facial trustworthiness can be influenced by the surrounding context in which a face is embedded: contexts that convey threat make faces less trustworthy. In four studies (N = 388, three preregistered) we tested whether face-context integration is influenced by how faces and contexts are encoded relationally. In Experiments 1a to 1c, face-context integration was stronger when threatening stimuli were attributable to the human action. Faces were judged less trustworthy when shown in threatening contexts that were ascribable (vs. non-ascribable) to the human action. In Experiment 2, we manipulated face-context relations using instructions. When instructions presented facial stimuli as belonging to the "perpetrators" of the threatening contexts, no difference with the control (no-instructions) condition was found in face-context integration. Instead, the effect was reduced when faces were presented as "victims." We discussed the importance of considering relational reasoning when studying face-context integration.

Understanding trait impressions from faces

Impressions from faces are made remarkably quickly and they can underpin behaviour in a wide variety of social contexts. Over the last decade many studies have sought to trace the links between facial cues and social perception and behaviour. One such body of work has shown clear overlap between the fields of face perception and social stereotyping by demonstrating a role for conceptual stereotypes in impression formation from faces. We integrate these results involving conceptual influences on impressions with another substantial body of research in visual cognition which demonstrates that much of the variance in impressions can be predicted from perceptual, data-driven models using physical cues in face images. We relate this discussion to the phylogenetic, cultural, individual and developmental origins of facial impressions and define priority research questions for the field including investigating non-WEIRD cultures, tracking the developmental trajectory of impressions and determining the malleability of impression formation.

Methodological issues when using face prototypes: A case study on the Faceaurus dataset

Prototype faces, created by averaging faces from several individuals sharing a common characteristic (for example a certain personality trait), can be used for highly informative experimental designs in face research. Although the facial prototype method is both ingenious and useful, we argue that its implementation is associated with three major issues: lack of external validity and non-independence of the units of information, both aggravated by a lack of transparency regarding the methods used and their limitations. Here, we describe these limitations and illustrate our claims with a systematic review of studies creating facial stimuli using the prototypes dataset 'Faceaurus'. We then propose some solutions that can eliminate or reduce these problems. We provide recommendations for future research employing this method on how to produce more generalisable and replicable results.

Mental Representations of Sickness Positively Relate to Adaptive Health Behaviors

An ecological approach to social perception states that impressions of faces have functional value in that they guide adaptive behavior ensuring people's survival. For example, people may avoid others whose faces appear sick to avoid an illness representing a survival threat. We broadened the ecological approach in the current work by examining whether merely thinking about what illnesses on faces look like (i.e., how sickness on faces is represented) holds functional value in guiding behavior to ensure survival. Using an example of a real illness threat as proof of concept, we showed that people self-reported performing more adaptive health behaviors in response to COVID-19 if they had sicker representations of COVID-19 on faces (Experiment 1a). These sicker representations of COVID-19 on faces explained, in part, a positive relation between perceptions of COVID-19 as threatening and people's self-reported adaptive health behaviors. We then replicated these patterns when experimentally manipulating illness threat (Experiment 1b). We found that people expected more adaptive health behaviors and had sicker representations of illness on faces in response to illness threats that were more relative to less threatening. These findings suggest that mentally representing sickness on faces is enough to guide people's behaviors in response to illness threats.

In the Face of Opportunities: Facial Structures of Scientists Shape Expectations of STEM Environments

Impressions of role leaders provide information about anticipated opportunities in a role, and these perceptions can influence attitudes about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) pathways. Specifically, the facial structures of role leaders influenced perceived affordances of working with that person, such as the availability of communal and agentic opportunities (e.g., mentorship; achievement). STEM faculty with trustworthy (relative to dominant) faces were seen as valuing communal goals (Studies 1-3), and in turn, perceived as affording both communal and agentic opportunities in their research groups (Studies 2-3b). These heightened goal opportunities aligned with perceptions that trustworthy-faced advisors would enact more group-supportive behaviors (Study 2). Consequently, students anticipated fairer treatment and reported greater interest in labs directed by trustworthy- than dominant-faced leaders (Studies 3a-4a), even when images were accompanied by explicit information about leaders' collaborative behavior (Study 4b). The faces of leaders can thus function as the "face" of that role and the surrounding culture.

Emotional authenticity modulates affective and social trait inferences from voices

The human voice is a primary tool for verbal and nonverbal communication. Studies on laughter emphasize a distinction between spontaneous laughter, which reflects a genuinely felt emotion, and volitional laughter, associated with more intentional communicative acts. Listeners can reliably differentiate the two. It remains unclear, however, if they can detect authenticity in other vocalizations, and whether authenticity determines the affective and social impressions that we form about others. Here, 137 participants listened to laughs and cries that could be spontaneous or volitional and rated them on authenticity, valence, arousal, trustworthiness and dominance. Bayesian mixed models indicated that listeners detect authenticity similarly well in laughter and crying. Speakers were also perceived to be more trustworthy, and in a higher arousal state, when their laughs and cries were spontaneous. Moreover, spontaneous laughs were evaluated as more positive than volitional ones, and we found that the same acoustic features predicted perceived authenticity and trustworthiness in laughter: high pitch, spectral variability and less voicing. For crying, associations between acoustic features and ratings were less reliable. These findings indicate that emotional authenticity shapes affective and social trait inferences from voices, and that the ability to detect authenticity in vocalizations is not limited to laughter. This article is part of the theme issue 'Voice modulation: from origin and mechanism to social impact (Part I)'.

A Cautionary Note on Predicting Social Judgments from Faces with Deep Neural Networks

People spontaneously infer other people’s psychology from faces, encompassing inferences of their affective states, cognitive states, and stable traits such as personality. These judgments are known to be often invalid, but nonetheless bias many social decisions. Their importance and ubiquity have made them popular targets for automated prediction using deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs). Here, we investigated the applicability of this approach: how well does it generalize, and what biases does it introduce? We compared three distinct sets of features (from a face identification DCNN, an object recognition DCNN, and using facial geometry), and tested their prediction across multiple out-of-sample datasets. Across judgments and datasets, features from both pre-trained DCNNs provided better predictions than did facial geometry. However, predictions using object recognition DCNN features were not robust to superficial cues (e.g., color and hair style). Importantly, predictions using face identification DCNN features were not specific: models trained to predict one social judgment (e.g., trustworthiness) also significantly predicted other social judgments (e.g., femininity and criminal), and at an even higher accuracy in some cases than predicting the judgment of interest (e.g., trustworthiness). Models trained to predict affective states (e.g., happy) also significantly predicted judgments of stable traits (e.g., sociable), and vice versa. Our analysis pipeline not only provides a flexible and efficient framework for predicting affective and social judgments from faces but also highlights the dangers of such automated predictions: correlated but unintended judgments can drive the predictions of the intended judgments.

Neural responses to facial attractiveness in the judgments of moral goodness and moral beauty

The judgments of moral goodness and moral beauty objectively refer to the perception and evaluation of moral traits, which are generally influenced by facial attractiveness. For centuries, people have equated beauty with the possession of positive qualities, but it is not clear whether the association between beauty and positive qualities exerts a similarly implicit influence on people's responses to moral goodness and moral beauty, how it affects those responses, and what is the neural basis for such an effect. The present study is the first to examine the neural responses to facial attractiveness in the judgments of moral goodness and moral beauty. We found that beautiful faces in both moral judgments activated the left ventral occipitotemporal cortices sensitive to the geometric configuration of the faces, demonstrating that both moral goodness and moral beauty required the automatic visual analysis of geometrical configuration of attractive faces. In addition, compared to beautiful faces during moral goodness judgment, beautiful faces during moral beauty judgment induced unique activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and midline cortical structures involved in the emotional-valenced information about attractive faces. The opposite comparison elicited specific activity in the left superior temporal cortex and premotor area, which play a critical role in the recognition of facial identity. Our results demonstrated that the neural responses to facial attractiveness in the process of higher order moral decision-makings exhibit both task-general and task-specific characteristics. Our findings contribute to the understanding of the essence of the relationship between morality and aesthetics.

Consensus Enables Accurate Social Judgments

Ubiquitous to theories of social perception is an assumed relationship between an attribute’s (e.g., intelligence) “signal” and judgment accuracy, with accuracy impossible without the presence and consensual use of signal. Yet this foundational assumption remains untested. Our investigation focused on consensus (quantified using intraclass correlations, ICCs), which should suggest signal availability, according to theories of accurate social perception. Study 1 confirmed that judgments of different social attributes exhibit different degrees of consensus. Study 2 specifically tested the consensus → accuracy link, anticipating that social judgments with higher consensus (target ICCs) would show greater judgment accuracy. Using 497,780 judgments of 3,847 targets from 4,162 participants across 45 data sets testing a broad variety of social judgments, we found that consensus moderated the relationship between targets’ self-report and participants’ judgments: Judgment accuracy was higher when consensus was higher. Results show the first empirical support for a foundational assumption of theories of social perception.

Nonverbal pre-performance expressions of professional darts players distinguish between good and poor performance

The present research attempted to extend prior research that showed that thin-slices of pre-performance nonverbal behavior (NVB) of professional darts players gives valid information to observers about subsequent performance tendencies. Specifically, we investigated what kind of nonverbal cues were associated with success and informed thin-slice ratings. Participants (N = 61) were first asked to estimate the performance of a random sample of videos showing the preparatory NVB of professional darts players (N = 47) either performing well (470 clips) or poorly (470 clips). Preparatory NVB was assessed via preparation times and Active Appearance Modeling using Noldus FaceReader. Results showed that observers could distinguish between good and poor performance based on thin-slices of preparatory NVB (p = 0.001, d = 0.87). Further analyses showed that facial expressions prior to poor performance showed more arousal (p = 0.011, ƞ²_p = 0.10), sadness (p = 0.040, ƞ²_p = 0.04), and anxiety (p = 0.009, ƞ²_p = 0.09) and preparation times were shorter (p = 0.001, ƞ²_p = 0.36) prior to poor performance than good performance. Lens model analyses showed preparation times (p = 0.001, rho = 0.18), neutral (p = 0.001, rho = 0.13), sad (rho = 0.12), and facial expressions of arousal (p = 0.001, rho = 0.11) to be correlated with observers’ performance ratings. Hence, preparation times and facial cues associated with a player’s level of arousal, neutrality, and sadness seem to be valid nonverbal cues that observers utilize to infer information about subsequent perceptual-motor performance.

Accuracy in Facial Trustworthiness Impressions: Kernel of Truth or Modern Physiognomy? A Meta-Analysis

Being able to identify trustworthy strangers is a critical social skill. However, whether such impressions are accurate is debatable. Critically, the field currently lacks a quantitative summary of the evidence. To address this gap, we conducted two meta-analyses. We tested whether there is a correlation between perceived and actual trustworthiness across faces, and whether perceivers show above-chance accuracy at assessing trustworthiness. Both meta-analyses revealed significant, modest accuracy (face level, r = .14; perceiver level, r = .27). Perceiver-level effects depended on domain, with aggressiveness and sexual unfaithfulness having stronger effects than agreeableness, criminality, financial reciprocity, and honesty. We also applied research weaving to map the literature, revealing potential biases, including a preponderance of Western studies, a lack of "cross-talk" between research groups, and clarity issues. Overall, this modest accuracy is unlikely to be of practical utility. Moreover, we strongly urge the field to improve reporting standards and generalizability of the results.

Perception of the Potential for Interaction in Social Scenes

In urban environments, humans often encounter other people that may engage one in interaction. How do humans perceive such invitations to interact at a glance? We briefly presented participants with pictures of actors carrying out one of 11 behaviors (e.g., waving or looking at a phone) at four camera-actor distances. Participants were asked to describe what they might do in such a situation, how they decided, and what stood out most in the photograph. In addition, participants rated how likely they deemed interaction to take place. Participants formulated clear responses about how they might act. We show convincingly that what participants would do depended on the depicted behavior, but not the camera-actor distance. The likeliness to interact ratings depended both on the depicted behavior and the camera-actor distance. We conclude that humans perceive the "gist" of photographs and that various aspects of the actor, action, and context depicted in photographs are subjectively available at a glance. Our conclusions are discussed in the context of scene perception, social robotics, and intercultural differences.

Person knowledge shapes face identity perception

Recognition of others' identity through facial features is essential in life. Using both correlational and experimental approaches, we examined how person knowledge biases the perception of others' facial identity. When a participant believed any two individuals were more similar in personality, their faces were perceived to be correspondingly more similar (assessed via mousetracking, Study 1). Further, participants' facial representations of target individuals that were believed to have a more similar personality were found to have a greater physical resemblance (assessed via reverse-correlation, Studies 2 and 3). Finally, when participants learned about novel individuals who had a more similar personality, their faces were visually represented more similarly (Study 4). Together, the findings show that the perception of facial identity is driven not only by facial features but also the person knowledge we have learned about others, biasing it toward alternate identities despite the fact that those identities lack any physical resemblance.

Which Facial Features Are Central in Impression Formation?

Which facial characteristics do people rely on when forming personality impressions? Previous research has uncovered an array of facial features that influence people’s impressions. Even though some (classes of) features, such as resemblances to emotional expressions or facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), play a central role in theories of social perception, their relative importance in impression formation remains unclear. Here, we model faces along a wide range of theoretically important dimensions and use machine learning techniques to test how well 28 features predict impressions of trustworthiness and dominance in a diverse set of 597 faces. In line with overgeneralization theory, emotion resemblances were most predictive of both traits. Other features that have received a lot of attention in the literature, such as fWHR, were relatively uninformative. Our results highlight the importance of modeling faces along a wide range of dimensions to elucidate their relative importance in impression formation.

Beliefs, affordances, and adolescent development: Lessons from a decade of growth mindset interventions

Beliefs play a central role in human development. For instance, a growth mindset-a belief about the malleability of intelligence-can shape how adolescents interpret and respond to academic difficulties and how they subsequently navigate the educational system. But do usually-adaptive beliefs have the same effects for adolescents regardless of the contexts they are in? Answering this question can reveal new insights into classic developmental questions about continuity and change. Here we present the Mindset×Context framework and we apply this model to the instructive case of growth mindset interventions. We show that teaching students a growth mindset is most effective in educational contexts that provide affordances for a growth mindset; that is, contexts that permit and encourage students to view ability as developable and to act on that belief. This evidence contradicts the "beliefs alone" hypothesis, which holds that teaching adolescents a growth mindset is enough and that students can profit from these beliefs in almost any context, even unsupportive ones. The Mindset×Context framework leads to the realization that in order to produce more widespread and lasting change, we must complement the belief-changing interventions that have been aimed at students with new interventions that guide teachers toward classroom policies and practices that allow students' growth mindset beliefs to take root and yield benefits.

Faces and Sounds Becoming One: Cross-Modal Integration of Facial and Auditory Cues in Judging Trustworthiness

Face processing has mainly been investigated by presenting facial expressions without any contextual information. However, in everyday interactions with others, the sight of a face is often accompanied by contextual cues that are processed either visually or under different sensory modalities. Here, we tested whether the perceived trustworthiness of a face is influenced by the auditory context in which that face is embedded. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated trustworthiness from faces that were surrounded by either threatening or non-threatening auditory contexts. Results showed that faces were judged more untrustworthy when accompanied by threatening auditory information. Experiment 2 replicated the effect in a design that disentangled the effects of threatening contexts from negative contexts in general. Thus, perceiving facial trustworthiness involves a cross-modal integration of the face and the level of threat posed by the surrounding context.

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.

E-perceptions and Business 'Mating': The Communication Effects of the Relative Width of Males' Faces in Business Portraits

This study investigates the relative impacts of the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) on the first impressions business professionals form of business consultants when seeing their photographs on a corporate website or LinkedIn page. By applying conjoint analysis on field experiment data (n = 381), we find that in a zero-acquaintance situation business professionals prefer low-fWHR business consultants. This implies that they prefer a face that communicates trustworthiness to one that communicates success. Further, we have investigated the words that business professionals use to describe their preferred consultant. These approach motivations help practitioners to improve the picture-text alignment. The results underline the necessity to critically assess the pictures and text used on websites and media platforms such as LinkedIn for business purposes, and to see them as a key element of business and self-communication that can be altered in order to improve business 'mating.'

Chicago Face Database: Multiracial expansion

Multiracial individuals represent a growing segment of the population and have been increasingly the focus of empirical study. Much of this research centers on the perception and racial categorization of multiracial individuals. The current paper reviews some of this research and describes the different types of stimuli that have been used in these paradigms. We describe the strengths and weaknesses associated with different operationalizations of multiracialism and highlight the dearth of research using faces of real multiracial individuals, which we posit may be due to the lack of available stimuli. Our research seeks to satisfy this need by providing a free set of high-resolution, standardized images featuring 88 real multiracial individuals along with extensive norming data and objective physical measures of these faces. These data are offered as an extension of the widely used Chicago Face Database and are available for download at www.chicagofaces.org for use in research.

The Expression of Success: Are Thin-Slices of Pre-performance Nonverbal Behavior Prior to Throwing Darts Predictive of Performance in Professional Darts?

The present research attempted to test how skilled people are at predicting perceptual-motor performance of professional darts players based on short observations of pre-performance nonverbal behavior. In four thin-slices experiments (total N = 490) we randomly sampled stimulus material from the 2017 World Championships of Darts showing short video recordings of the players immediately before throwing darts. Participants were asked to estimate the points scored for the respective throws. Results across four experiments, all of which were successfully replicated in direct replication attempts, supported the hypothesis that pre-performance nonverbal behavior of professional darts players gives valid information to observers about subsequent performance tendencies. The present research is the first to show that highly skilled individuals seem to display nonverbal cues that observers can pick up to draw inferences about how these individuals are likely to perform.

Adults' facial impressions of children's niceness, but not shyness, show modest accuracy

Lay wisdom warns against "judging a book by its cover." However, facial first impressions influence people's behaviour towards others, so it is critical that we understand whether these impressions are at all accurate. Understanding impressions of children's faces is particularly important because these impressions can have social consequences during a crucial time of development. Here, we examined the accuracy of two traits that capture the most variance in impressions of children's faces, niceness and shyness. We collected face images and parental reports of actual niceness/shyness for 86 children (4-11 years old). Different images of the same person can lead to different impressions, and so we employed a novel approach by obtaining impressions from five images of each child. These images were ambient, representing the natural variability in faces. Adult strangers rated the faces for niceness (Study 1) or shyness (Study 2). Niceness impressions were modestly accurate for different images of the same child, regardless of whether these images were presented individually or simultaneously as a group. Shyness impressions were not accurate, for images presented either individually or as a group. Together, these results demonstrate modest accuracy in adults' impressions of niceness, but not shyness, from children's faces. Furthermore, our results reveal that this accuracy can be captured by images which contain natural face variability, and holds across different images of the same child's face. These results invite future research into the cues and causal mechanisms underlying this link between facial impressions of niceness and nice behaviour in children.

Valenced appearance-behavior cues affect the extent of impression memory

Prior work has often shown higher memory for impressions of valenced verbal cues when such valence is congruent with valence conveyed by actors' facial characteristics. The current work examined specific valence contributions to appearance-congruent memory advantages. Untrustworthy and trustworthy faces were paired with positive, negative, and neutral behaviours (Study 1) and traits (Study 2). Negative versus positive trust-related behaviours are more highly diagnostic and weigh more heavily into impressions, suggesting that impressions of negative behaviours should also be more memorable. Consistent with this possibility, an appearance-congruity advantage for memory of impressions formed from behaviours was larger for untrustworthy versus trustworthy faces after correcting for appearance-congruent response biases (Study 1). When forming impressions from traits, verbal cues less contextualised than behaviours, a larger appearance-congruity advantage in impression memory for untrustworthy versus trustworthy faces could be attributed to appearance-congruent responding (Study 2). Across studies, more extremely valenced impressions were better remembered than more neutral impressions regardless of facial trustworthiness. True appearance-congruity advantages in impression memory may thus be larger for untrustworthy faces when verbal cues can be more contextualised. Further, forming impressions of more extremely valenced verbal cues may enhance impression memory regardless of whether cues are incongruent with facial characteristics.

Fast saccadic and manual responses to faces presented to the koniocellular visual pathway

The parallel pathways of the human visual system differ in their tuning to luminance, color, and spatial frequency. These attunements recently have been shown to propagate to differential processing of higher-order stimuli, facial threat cues, in the magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) pathways, with greater sensitivity to clear and ambiguous threat, respectively. The role of the third, koniocellular (K) pathway in facial threat processing, however, remains unknown. To address this gap in knowledge, we briefly presented peripheral face stimuli psychophysically biased towards M, P, or K pathways. Observers were instructed to report via a key-press whether the face was angry or neutral while their eye movements and manual responses were recorded. We found that short-latency saccades were made more frequently to faces presented in the K channel than to P or M channels. Saccade latencies were not significantly modulated by expressive and identity cues. In contrast, manual response latencies and accuracy were modulated by both pathway biasing and by interactions of facial expression with facial masculinity, such that angry male faces elicited the fastest, and angry female faces, the least accurate, responses. We conclude that face stimuli can evoke fast saccadic and manual responses when projected to the K pathway.

Accuracy and bias in first impressions of attachment style from faces

OBJECTIVE

People gather important social information from subtle nonverbal cues. Given that one's attachment style can meaningfully affect the quality of one's relationships, we investigated whether people could perceive men's and women's attachment styles from photos of their neutral faces.

METHOD

In two studies, we measured targets' attachment styles then asked participants (total N = 893) to judge the male and female targets' attachment anxiety and avoidance from photos of their neutral faces (total N = 331) and to report their own attachment anxiety and avoidance.

RESULTS

Participants detected men's attachment style from face photos significantly better than chance in an initial exploratory study and in a preregistered replication but did not consistently detect women's attachment style from their face photos. Moreover, participants' own attachment style biased these first impressions: Individuals with greater attachment anxiety viewed others as more anxiously attached.

CONCLUSIONS

People can detect some hints of unacquainted others' attachment styles from their faces but their own anxious attachment can bias these judgments.

The Expression of Ego Depletion

Abstract. Is depleted self-control capacity detectable from thin slices of behavior? In four video-conditions (early-depleted; early-non-depleted; late-depleted; late-non-depleted) untrained observers rated target persons’ available self-control capacity in Experiments 1 and 2 (without sound) and in terms of fatigue and negative affect (Experiment 3). Videos were analyzed with Noldus FaceReader software (Experiment 4). Ego depletion could reliably be detected from thin slices of behavior. Nonverbal expressions coinciding with ego depletion are associated with cues signaling momentary levels of self-control capacity, fatigue, and some negative affective states. FaceReader analyses indicated that facial expressions coinciding with ego depletion are subtle and are extractable from facial dynamics rather than expression intensities. Results indicate that self-control depletion might not only have intrapersonal effects, but also interpersonal effects.

The Influence of Job Candidates’ Physical Appearance on Interview Evaluations

Abstract. The influence of a candidate’s physical appearance on interview evaluations is well documented. However, few models exist that explain how and why specific components of physical appearance influence interviewer perceptions. We address this discrepancy by identifying the primary components of appearance and integrating findings from the appearance literature to explain the relationship between candidate appearance and interview evaluations. We propose that interviewers compare traits inferred from a candidate’s physical appearance with traits associated with their prototype for the job position. Interviewers perceive a strong person-job fit when these traits align, which is indicated by a prototype match. By detailing this progression in the proposed conceptual model, this paper answers calls from recent research and provides new directions for future inquiry.

Nonverbal Communication

The field of nonverbal communication (NVC) has a long history involving many cue modalities, including face, voice, body, touch, and interpersonal space; different levels of analysis, including normative, group, and individual differences; and many substantive themes that cross from psychology into other disciplines. In this review, we focus on NVC as it pertains to individuals and social interaction. We concentrate specifically on ( a) the meanings and correlates of cues that are enacted (sent) by encoders and ( b) the perception of nonverbal cues and the accuracy of such perception. Frameworks are presented for conceptualizing and understanding the process of sending and receiving nonverbal cues. Measurement issues are discussed, and theoretical issues and new developments are covered briefly. Although our review is primarily oriented within social and personality psychology, the interdisciplinary nature of NVC is evident in the growing body of research on NVC across many areas of scientific inquiry.

What Modern Sports Competitions Can Tell Us About Human Nature

To fully understand human behavior, it seems inevitable to approach it from an evolutionary perspective. However, much of human behavior has been overwritten by culture and society, thus allowing little insight into how it might have evolved amid natural and sexual selection. Here, I argue that sports competitions, although a cultural phenomenon in themselves, strip away many of the cultural layers and reveal more primary, rudimentary aspects of human behavior. Fortunately, because they are ubiquitous, meticulously recorded, and often quantified in great detail, sports competitions provide a plethora of usable data. In this article I provide an evolutionary account of the cross-cultural existence and popularity of sports by reviewing evidence of four functional hypotheses that regard the omnipresence of sports as a by-product of fitness-related adaptations (skill acquisition and development, status seeking, courtship display, and coalition formation). Then I outline how the growing body of sports data and documentation can be exploited for increasing our understanding of human nature (e.g., on conflict and cooperation, lateral preferences, territoriality, and nonverbal communication). The article concludes by giving guidelines for future cross-disciplinary research to advance the understanding of how evolution has shaped human behavior.

Judgements of a speaker's personality are correlated across differing content and stimulus type

It has previously been shown that first impressions of a speaker's personality, whether accurate or not, can be judged from short utterances of vowels and greetings, as well as from prolonged sentences and readings of complex paragraphs. From these studies, it is established that listeners' judgements are highly consistent with one another, suggesting that different people judge personality traits in a similar fashion, with three key personality traits being related to measures of valence (associated with trustworthiness), dominance, and attractiveness. Yet, particularly in voice perception, limited research has established the reliability of such personality judgements across stimulus types of varying lengths. Here we investigate whether first impressions of trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness of novel speakers are related when a judgement is made on hearing both one word and one sentence from the same speaker. Secondly, we test whether what is said, thus adjusting content, influences the stability of personality ratings. 60 Scottish voices (30 females) were recorded reading two texts: one of ambiguous content and one with socially-relevant content. One word (~500 ms) and one sentence (~3000 ms) were extracted from each recording for each speaker. 181 participants (138 females) rated either male or female voices across both content conditions (ambiguous, socially-relevant) and both stimulus types (word, sentence) for one of the three personality traits (trustworthiness, dominance, attractiveness). Pearson correlations showed personality ratings between words and sentences were strongly correlated, with no significant influence of content. In short, when establishing an impression of a novel speaker, judgments of three key personality traits are highly related whether you hear one word or one sentence, irrespective of what they are saying. This finding is consistent with initial personality judgments serving as elucidators of approach or avoidance behaviour, without modulation by time or content. All data and sounds are available on OSF (osf.io/s3cxy).

Looking into your eyes: observed pupil size influences approach-avoidance responses

The eyes reveal important social messages, such as emotions and whether a person is aroused and interested or bored and fatigued. A growing body of research has also shown that individuals with large pupils are generally evaluated positively by observers, while those with small pupils are perceived negatively. Here, we examined whether observed pupil size influences approach-avoidance tendencies. Participants performed an Approach-Avoidance Task using faces with large and small pupil sizes. Results showed that pupil size influences the accuracy of arm movements. Specifically, individuals were less prone to approach a face with small pupils than a face with large pupils. Conversely, participants were less prone to avoid a face with large pupils than a face with small pupils. Collectively, these findings suggest that perceivers attend to a facial cue - pupil size - when interacting with others.

Thin Slices of Athletes' Nonverbal Behavior Give Away Game Location: Testing the Territoriality Hypothesis of the Home Game Advantage

The present research investigated whether perceivers could detect who is playing at home or away in soccer matches based on thin slices of professional (Experiment 1) and amateur (Experiment 3) athletes' nonverbal behavior prior to the match and whether perceivers rated athletes playing at home relatively higher on behavioral dimensions (Experiments 2 and 3) linked to territoriality. In Experiment 1 ( N = 80), participants watched short videos depicting soccer players prior to a UEFA Champions League match and rated whether athletes were more likely to be playing at home or away. In Experiment 2 (two groups N = 102 and N = 101), perceivers rated these videos in terms of assertiveness, dominance, and aggression. In Experiment 3, we replicated the procedure of Experiments 1 and 2 with different stimulus material from amateur soccer ( N = 112). Participants could significantly differentiate between home playing and away playing athletes (Experiment 1: d = 0.44 and Experiment 3: d = 1.07). Experiments 2 and 3 showed that perceivers rated professional and amateur soccer players higher on assertiveness ( d = 0.34-0.63), dominance ( d = 0.20-0.55), and aggression ( d = 0.16-0.49) when playing at home compared to playing away. Findings are supportive of evolutionary accounts of nonverbal behavior, ecological approaches to person perception, and the thin slices of behavior hypothesis by demonstrating that humans change their nonverbal behavior depending on game location. We discuss the relevance of the present findings for the home advantage in sports.

The Impact of Health, Wealth, and Attractiveness on Romantic Evaluation from Photographs of Faces

A large literature suggests that men and women differ in their self-reported mate preferences such that men place greater weight on physical attractiveness than women do, whereas women value financial prospects more than men. Yet, little research has addressed how these differences generalize to other contexts, such as modern online dating in which mate selection may largely depend on visual cues. Distinct from the sex differences observed in previous studies relying on self-reports, we found that men and women both used perceptions of health and attractiveness to select hypothetical partners based on photographs of their faces. Importantly, although people reliably identified others' wealth from their photographs, these perceptions did not influence men's or women's partner selections. Thus, men and women may select romantic partners similarly based on limited visual information.

Women's hair as a cue to desired relationship and parenting characteristics

We investigated how women's hair color (blond, brown, black) and length (short, medium, long) influences males' judgments about the women's age, health, physical attractiveness, relationship potential, and parenting capability. Results, which are generally consistent with evolutionary psychology approaches, indicate that hair color and, to a lesser extent, length can affect perceptions of personal characteristics. More specifically, we found that lighter hair (blond and brown) compared to darker hair (black) is generally associated with perceptions of youth, health and attractiveness, and generally leads to more positive perceptions of relationship and parenting potential. Furthermore, the relationships between variables suggest that characteristics directly related to reproductive potential may be inferred from more obvious indirect characteristics. These results suggest that males are able to make complex judgments about women concerning their desirable relationship and parenting potential based on discernable characteristics such as hair color and length.