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Susilo T, Duchaine B. Advances in developmental prosopagnosia research. Curr Opin Neurobiol 2013; 23:423-9. [PMID: 23391526 DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2012.12.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 125] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2012] [Accepted: 12/31/2012] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) refers to face recognition deficits in the absence of brain damage. DP affects ∼2% of the population, and it often runs in families. DP studies have made considerable progress in identifying the cognitive and neural characteristics of the disorder. A key challenge is to develop a valid taxonomy of DP that will facilitate many aspects of research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tirta Susilo
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
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52
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Social judgments from faces. Curr Opin Neurobiol 2013; 23:373-80. [PMID: 23347644 DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2012.12.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 61] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/09/2012] [Revised: 12/21/2012] [Accepted: 12/28/2012] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
People make rapid and consequential social judgments from minimal (non-emotional) facial cues. There has been rapid progress in identifying the perceptual basis of these judgments using data-driven, computational models. In contrast, our understanding of the neural underpinnings of these judgments is rather limited. Meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies find a wide range of seemingly inconsistent responses in the amygdala that co-vary with social judgments from faces. Guided by computational models of social judgments, these responses can be accounted by positing that the amygdala (and posterior face selective regions) tracks face typicality. Atypical faces, whether positively or negatively evaluated, elicit stronger responses in the amygdala. We conclude with the promise of data-driven methods for modeling neural responses to social judgments from faces.
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53
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Chung H, Lee H, Chang DS, Kim HS, Lee H, Park HJ, Chae Y. Doctor's attire influences perceived empathy in the patient-doctor relationship. PATIENT EDUCATION AND COUNSELING 2012; 89:387-391. [PMID: 22445730 DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2012.02.017] [Citation(s) in RCA: 46] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/02/2011] [Revised: 02/23/2012] [Accepted: 02/26/2012] [Indexed: 05/31/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE This study investigated whether doctors' attire influences the perception of empathy in the patient-doctor relationship during a therapeutic encounter. METHODS A total number of 143 patients were divided into four groups when they were consulting a Traditional Korean Medicine doctor. Depending on the group, the same doctor was wearing four different attires--Casual, Suit, Traditional dress, White coat--when having a clinical consultation with the patients. RESULTS The patients preferred white coat and traditional dress more than other attires, giving highest scores to white coat in competency, trustworthiness and preference of attire and to traditional dress in comfortableness and contentment with the consultation. The "Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE)" score was significantly higher in the "White coat" and "Traditional" groups, compared to the "Casual" and "Suit" groups. CONCLUSION The strong association between the patients' preference of doctors' attire and the CARE score indicates that the doctor's attire plays not only an important role for establishing confidence and trustworthiness but also for the perception of empathy in the patient-doctor relationship. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS The doctor's attire can function as an effective tool of non-verbal communication in order to signal confidence, trust and empathy and establish a good patient-doctor relationship.
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Affiliation(s)
- Heesu Chung
- Acupuncture & Meridian Science Research Center, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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54
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Moriya J, Tanno Y, Sugiura Y. Repeated short presentations of morphed facial expressions change recognition and evaluation of facial expressions. PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2012. [PMID: 23179582 DOI: 10.1007/s00426-012-0463-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/27/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated whether sensitivity to and evaluation of facial expressions varied with repeated exposure to non-prototypical facial expressions for a short presentation time. A morphed facial expression was presented for 500 ms repeatedly, and participants were required to indicate whether each facial expression was happy or angry. We manipulated the distribution of presentations of the morphed facial expressions for each facial stimulus. Some of the individuals depicted in the facial stimuli expressed anger frequently (i.e., anger-prone individuals), while the others expressed happiness frequently (i.e., happiness-prone individuals). After being exposed to the faces of anger-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals' angry faces. Further, after being exposed to the faces of happiness-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals' happy faces. We also found a relative increase in the social desirability of happiness-prone individuals after exposure to the facial stimuli.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jun Moriya
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan,
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55
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Quadflieg S, Todorov A, Laguesse R, Rossion B. Normal face-based judgements of social characteristics despite severely impaired holistic face processing. VISUAL COGNITION 2012. [DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2012.707155] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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56
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Abstract
As the racial composition of the population changes, intergroup interactions are increasingly common. To understand how we perceive and categorize race and the attitudes that flow from it, scientists have used brain imaging techniques to examine how social categories of race and ethnicity are processed, evaluated and incorporated in decision-making. We review these findings, focusing on black and white race categories. A network of interacting brain regions is important in the unintentional, implicit expression of racial attitudes and its control. On the basis of the overlap in the neural circuitry of race, emotion and decision-making, we speculate as to how this emerging research might inform how we recognize and respond to variations in race and its influence on unintended race-based attitudes and decisions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer T Kubota
- Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, USA
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57
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Aviezer H, Hassin RR, Perry A, Dudarev V, Bentin S. The right place at the right time: priming facial expressions with emotional face components in developmental visual agnosia. Neuropsychologia 2012; 50:949-57. [PMID: 22349446 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.02.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/07/2011] [Revised: 01/31/2012] [Accepted: 02/03/2012] [Indexed: 10/14/2022]
Abstract
The current study examined the nature of deficits in emotion recognition from facial expressions in case LG, an individual with a rare form of developmental visual agnosia (DVA). LG presents with profoundly impaired recognition of facial expressions, yet the underlying nature of his deficit remains unknown. During typical face processing, normal sighted individuals extract information about expressed emotions from face regions with activity diagnostic for specific emotion categories. Given LG's impairment, we sought to shed light on his emotion perception by examining if priming facial expressions with diagnostic emotional face components would facilitate his recognition of the emotion expressed by the face. LG and control participants matched isolated face components with components appearing in a subsequently presented full-face and then categorized the face's emotion. Critically, the matched components were from regions which were diagnostic or non-diagnostic of the emotion portrayed by the full face. In experiment 1, when the full faces were briefly presented (150 ms), LG's performance was strongly influenced by the diagnosticity of the components: his emotion recognition was boosted within normal limits when diagnostic components were used and was obliterated when non-diagnostic components were used. By contrast, in experiment 2, when the face-exposure duration was extended (2000 ms), the beneficial effect of the diagnostic matching was diminished as was the detrimental effect of the non-diagnostic matching. These data highlight the impact of diagnostic facial features in normal expression recognition and suggest that impaired emotion recognition in DVA results from deficient visual integration across diagnostic face components.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hillel Aviezer
- Department of Psychology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
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58
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Said CP, Haxby JV, Todorov A. Brain systems for assessing the affective value of faces. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2011; 366:1660-70. [PMID: 21536552 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2010.0351] [Citation(s) in RCA: 117] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Cognitive neuroscience research on facial expression recognition and face evaluation has proliferated over the past 15 years. Nevertheless, large questions remain unanswered. In this overview, we discuss the current understanding in the field, and describe what is known and what remains unknown. In §2, we describe three types of behavioural evidence that the perception of traits in neutral faces is related to the perception of facial expressions, and may rely on the same mechanisms. In §3, we discuss cortical systems for the perception of facial expressions, and argue for a partial segregation of function in the superior temporal sulcus and the fusiform gyrus. In §4, we describe the current understanding of how the brain responds to emotionally neutral faces. To resolve some of the inconsistencies in the literature, we perform a large group analysis across three different studies, and argue that one parsimonious explanation of prior findings is that faces are coded in terms of their typicality. In §5, we discuss how these two lines of research--perception of emotional expressions and face evaluation--could be integrated into a common, cognitive neuroscience framework.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christopher P Said
- Computational Neuroimaging Laboratory, Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, NY, USA.
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59
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Bzdok D, Langner R, Hoffstaedter F, Turetsky BI, Zilles K, Eickhoff SB. The modular neuroarchitecture of social judgments on faces. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2011; 22:951-61. [PMID: 21725038 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhr166] [Citation(s) in RCA: 65] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022]
Abstract
Face-derived information on trustworthiness and attractiveness crucially influences social interaction. It is, however, unclear to what degree the functional neuroanatomy of these complex social judgments on faces reflects genuine social versus basic emotional and cognitive processing. To disentangle social from nonsocial contributions, we assessed commonalities and differences between the functional networks activated by judging social (trustworthiness, attractiveness), emotional (happiness), and cognitive (age) facial traits. Relative to happiness and age evaluations, both trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments selectively activated the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus, forming a core social cognition network. Moreover, they also elicited a higher amygdalar response than even the emotional control condition. Both social judgments differed, however, in their top-down modulation of face-sensitive regions: trustworthiness judgments recruited the posterior superior temporal sulcus, whereas attractiveness judgments recruited the fusiform gyrus. Social and emotional judgments converged and, therefore, likely interact in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Social and age judgments, on the other hand, commonly engaged the anterior insula, inferior parietal cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which appear to subserve more cognitive aspects in social evaluation. These findings demonstrate the modularity of social judgments on human faces by separating the neural correlates of social, face-specific, emotional, and cognitive processing facets.
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Affiliation(s)
- Danilo Bzdok
- Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany
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60
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Knutson KM, DeTucci KA, Grafman J. Implicit attitudes in prosopagnosia. Neuropsychologia 2011; 49:1851-62. [PMID: 21414330 PMCID: PMC3100369 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.03.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/28/2010] [Revised: 03/01/2011] [Accepted: 03/04/2011] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
We studied a male with acquired prosopagnosia using a battery of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) to investigate whether observing faces varying by social category would activate the patient's implicit social biases. We also asked him to categorize faces explicitly by race, gender, and political party. The patient, G.B., was marginally slower to categorize black compared to white faces. He showed congruency effects in the race and celebrity IATs, but not in the gender or political IATs. These results indicate that G.B. possesses an implicit social sensitivity to certain facial stimuli despite an inability to overtly recognize familiar faces. The results demonstrate that social biases can be retrieved based on facial stimuli via pathways bypassing the fusiform gyri. Thus the IAT effect can be added to the list of covert recognition effects found in prosopagnosia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristine M. Knutson
- Cognitive Neuroscience Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
| | - Karen A. DeTucci
- Cognitive Neuroscience Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
| | - Jordan Grafman
- Cognitive Neuroscience Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
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61
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Said CP, Dotsch R, Todorov A. Reprint of: The amygdala and FFA track both social and non-social face dimensions. Neuropsychologia 2011; 49:630-9. [PMID: 21414463 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.028] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2010] [Revised: 08/05/2010] [Accepted: 08/09/2010] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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62
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Engell AD, Todorov A, Haxby JV. Common neural mechanisms for the evaluation of facial trustworthiness and emotional expressions as revealed by behavioral adaptation. Perception 2010; 39:931-41. [PMID: 20842970 DOI: 10.1068/p6633] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
People rapidly and automatically evaluate faces along many social dimensions. Here, we focus on judgments of trustworthiness, which approximate basic valence evaluation of faces, and test whether these judgments are an overgeneralization of the perception of emotional expressions. We used a behavioral adaptation paradigm to investigate whether the previously noted perceptual similarities between trustworthiness and emotional expressions of anger and happiness extend to their underlying neural representations. We found that adapting to angry or happy facial expressions causes trustworthiness evaluations of subsequently rated neutral faces to increase or decrease, respectively. Further, we found no such modulation of trustworthiness evaluations after participants were adapted to fearful expressions, suggesting that this effect is specific to angry and happy expressions. We conclude that, in line with the overgeneralization hypothesis, a common neural system is engaged during the evaluation of facial trustworthiness and expressions of anger and happiness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew D Engell
- Department of Psychology and Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
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63
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Bzdok D, Langner R, Caspers S, Kurth F, Habel U, Zilles K, Laird A, Eickhoff SB. ALE meta-analysis on facial judgments of trustworthiness and attractiveness. Brain Struct Funct 2010; 215:209-23. [PMID: 20978908 DOI: 10.1007/s00429-010-0287-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 96] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/07/2010] [Accepted: 10/13/2010] [Indexed: 10/18/2022]
Abstract
Faces convey a multitude of information in social interaction, among which are trustworthiness and attractiveness. Humans process and evaluate these two dimensions very quickly due to their great adaptive importance. Trustworthiness evaluation is crucial for modulating behavior toward strangers; attractiveness evaluation is a crucial factor for mate selection, possibly providing cues for reproductive success. As both dimensions rapidly guide social behavior, this study tests the hypothesis that both judgments may be subserved by overlapping brain networks. To this end, we conducted an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis on 16 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies pertaining to facial judgments of trustworthiness and attractiveness. Throughout combined, individual, and conjunction analyses on those two facial judgments, we observed consistent maxima in the amygdala which corroborates our initial hypothesis. This finding supports the contemporary paradigm shift extending the amygdala's role from dominantly processing negative emotional stimuli to processing socially relevant ones. We speculate that the amygdala filters sensory information with evolutionarily conserved relevance. Our data suggest that such a role includes not only "fight-or-flight" decisions but also social behaviors with longer term pay-off schedules, e.g., trustworthiness and attractiveness evaluation.
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Affiliation(s)
- D Bzdok
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
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64
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Said CP, Dotsch R, Todorov A. The amygdala and FFA track both social and non-social face dimensions. Neuropsychologia 2010; 48:3596-605. [PMID: 20727365 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.08.009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 57] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2010] [Revised: 08/05/2010] [Accepted: 08/09/2010] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
The amygdala is thought to perform a number of social functions, and has received much attention for its role in processing social properties of faces. In particular, it has been shown to respond more to facial expressions than to neutral faces, and more to positively valenced and negatively valenced faces than faces in the middle of the continuum. However, when these findings are viewed in the context of a multidimensional face space, an important question emerges. Face space is a vector space where every face can be represented as a point in the space. The origin of the space represents the average face. In this context, positively valenced and negatively valenced faces are further away from the average face than faces in the middle of the continuum. It is therefore unclear if the amygdala response to positively valenced and negatively valenced faces is due to their social properties or to their general distance from the average face. Here, we compared the amygdala response to a set of faces that varied along two dimensions centered around the average face but differing in social content. In both the amygdala and much of the posterior face network, we observed a similar response to both dimensions, with stronger responses to the extremes of the dimensions than to faces near the average face. These findings suggest that the responses in these regions to socially relevant faces may be partially due to general distance from the average face.
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65
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Schlicht EJ, Shimojo S, Camerer CF, Battaglia P, Nakayama K. Human wagering behavior depends on opponents' faces. PLoS One 2010; 5:e11663. [PMID: 20657772 PMCID: PMC2908123 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011663] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2009] [Accepted: 06/20/2010] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Research in competitive games has exclusively focused on how opponent models are developed through previous outcomes and how peoples' decisions relate to normative predictions. Little is known about how rapid impressions of opponents operate and influence behavior in competitive economic situations, although such subjective impressions have been shown to influence cooperative decision-making. This study investigates whether an opponent's face influences players' wagering decisions in a zero-sum game with hidden information. Participants made risky choices in a simplified poker task while being presented opponents whose faces differentially correlated with subjective impressions of trust. Surprisingly, we find that threatening face information has little influence on wagering behavior, but faces relaying positive emotional characteristics impact peoples' decisions. Thus, people took significantly longer and made more mistakes against emotionally positive opponents. Differences in reaction times and percent correct were greatest around the optimal decision boundary, indicating that face information is predominantly used when making decisions during medium-value gambles. Mistakes against emotionally positive opponents resulted from increased folding rates, suggesting that participants may have believed that these opponents were betting with hands of greater value than other opponents. According to these results, the best "poker face" for bluffing may not be a neutral face, but rather a face that contains emotional correlates of trustworthiness. Moreover, it suggests that rapid impressions of an opponent play an important role in competitive games, especially when people have little or no experience with an opponent.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erik J Schlicht
- Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
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66
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Carré JM, Morrissey MD, Mondloch CJ, McCormick CM. Estimating aggression from emotionally neutral faces: which facial cues are diagnostic? Perception 2010; 39:356-77. [PMID: 20465172 DOI: 10.1068/p6543] [Citation(s) in RCA: 53] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
The facial width-to-height ratio, a size-independent sexually dimorphic property of the human face, is correlated with aggressive behaviour in men. Furthermore, observers' estimates of aggression from emotionally neutral faces are accurate and are highly correlated with the facial width-to-height ratio. We investigated whether observers use the facial width-to-height ratio to estimate propensity for aggression. In experiments 1a-1c, estimates of aggression remained accurate when faces were blurred or cropped, manipulations that reduce featural cues but maintain the facial width-to-height ratio. Accuracy decreased when faces were scrambled, a manipulation that retains featural information but disrupts the facial width-to-height ratio. In experiment 2, computer-modeling software identified eight facial metrics that correlated with estimates of aggression; regression analyses revealed that the facial width-to-height ratio was the only metric that uniquely predicted these estimates. In experiment 3, we used a computer-generated set of faces varying in perceived threat (Oosterhof and Todorov, 2008 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 105 11087-11092) and found that as emotionally neutral faces became more 'threatening', the facial width-to-height ratio increased. Together, these experiments suggest that the facial width-to-height ratio is an honest signal of propensity for aggressive behaviour.
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Affiliation(s)
- Justin M Carré
- Department of Psychology, Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1, Canada
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67
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Abstract
Trust plays an important role in the formation and maintenance of human social relationships. But trusting others is associated with a cost, given the prevalence of cheaters and deceivers in human society. Recent research has shown that the peptide hormone oxytocin increases trust in humans. However, oxytocin also makes individuals susceptible to betrayal, because under influence of oxytocin, subjects perseverate in giving trust to others they know are untrustworthy. Testosterone, a steroid hormone associated with competition and dominance, is often viewed as an inhibitor of sociality, and may have antagonistic properties with oxytocin. The following experiment tests this possibility in a placebo-controlled, within-subjects design involving the administration of testosterone to 24 female subjects. We show that compared with the placebo, testosterone significantly decreases interpersonal trust, and, as further analyses established, this effect is determined by those who give trust easily. We suggest that testosterone adaptively increases social vigilance in these trusting individuals to better prepare them for competition over status and valued resources. In conclusion, our data provide unique insights into the hormonal regulation of human sociality by showing that testosterone downregulates interpersonal trust in an adaptive manner.
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68
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Bate S, Parris B, Haslam C, Kay J. Socio-emotional functioning and face recognition ability in the normal population. PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES 2010. [DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2009.10.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 43] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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69
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Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions. Trends Cogn Sci 2008; 12:455-60. [PMID: 18951830 DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.10.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 330] [Impact Index Per Article: 20.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/30/2008] [Revised: 09/06/2008] [Accepted: 10/08/2008] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
People reliably and automatically make personality inferences from facial appearance despite little evidence for their accuracy. Although such inferences are highly inter-correlated, research has traditionally focused on studying specific traits such as trustworthiness. We advocate an alternative, data-driven approach to identify and model the structure of face evaluation. Initial findings indicate that specific trait inferences can be represented within a 2D space defined by valence/trustworthiness and power/dominance evaluation of faces. Inferences along these dimensions are based on similarity to expressions signaling approach or avoidance behavior and features signaling physical strength, respectively, indicating that trait inferences from faces originate in functionally adaptive mechanisms. We conclude with a discussion of the potential role of the amygdala in face evaluation.
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70
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Abstract
People automatically evaluate faces on multiple trait dimensions, and these evaluations predict important social outcomes, ranging from electoral success to sentencing decisions. Based on behavioral studies and computer modeling, we develop a 2D model of face evaluation. First, using a principal components analysis of trait judgments of emotionally neutral faces, we identify two orthogonal dimensions, valence and dominance, that are sufficient to describe face evaluation and show that these dimensions can be approximated by judgments of trustworthiness and dominance. Second, using a data-driven statistical model for face representation, we build and validate models for representing face trustworthiness and face dominance. Third, using these models, we show that, whereas valence evaluation is more sensitive to features resembling expressions signaling whether the person should be avoided or approached, dominance evaluation is more sensitive to features signaling physical strength/weakness. Fourth, we show that important social judgments, such as threat, can be reproduced as a function of the two orthogonal dimensions of valence and dominance. The findings suggest that face evaluation involves an overgeneralization of adaptive mechanisms for inferring harmful intentions and the ability to cause harm and can account for rapid, yet not necessarily accurate, judgments from faces.
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71
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Todorov A, Baron SG, Oosterhof NN. Evaluating face trustworthiness: a model based approach. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2008; 3:119-27. [PMID: 19015102 PMCID: PMC2555464 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsn009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 224] [Impact Index Per Article: 14.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/10/2007] [Accepted: 02/28/2008] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Judgments of trustworthiness from faces determine basic approach/avoidance responses and approximate the valence evaluation of faces that runs across multiple person judgments. Here, based on trustworthiness judgments and using a computer model for face representation, we built a model for representing face trustworthiness (study 1). Using this model, we generated novel faces with an increased range of trustworthiness and used these faces as stimuli in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study (study 2). Although participants did not engage in explicit evaluation of the faces, the amygdala response changed as a function of face trustworthiness. An area in the right amygdala showed a negative linear response-as the untrustworthiness of faces increased so did the amygdala response. Areas in the left and right putamen, the latter area extended into the anterior insula, showed a similar negative linear response. The response in the left amygdala was quadratic--strongest for faces on both extremes of the trustworthiness dimension. The medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus also showed a quadratic response, but their response was strongest to faces in the middle range of the trustworthiness dimension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Todorov
- Department of Psychology and Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
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72
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Todorov A, Olson IR. Robust learning of affective trait associations with faces when the hippocampus is damaged, but not when the amygdala and temporal pole are damaged. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2008; 3:195-203. [PMID: 19015111 DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsn013] [Citation(s) in RCA: 63] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
People can form evaluative associations with faces after obtaining a small amount of behavioral information. We studied whether patients with medial temporal lobe amnesia can form such associations. Participants were presented with trustworthy- and untrustworthy-looking faces paired with positive or negative descriptions of behaviors. After the learning task, they were asked to rate the same faces on trait dimensions--trustworthiness, likeability and competence--and to make forced-choice judgments between faces. Normal young and older adults judged faces that had been associated with positive behaviors more positively than faces that had been associated with negative behaviors. A patient with hippocampal lesions showed similar learning effects. In contrast, two patients with hippocampal lesions that extended into the left amygdala and temporal pole showed little evidence of learning. All patients judged trustworthy-looking faces more positively than untrustworthy-looking faces. The findings suggest that the hippocampus is not critical for learning affective associations between traits and faces.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Todorov
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
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