Temperament and minor physical anomalies

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

We review research on accurate social perception at zero acquaintance and apply a Gibsonian ecological approach to redress several shortcomings. We argue that recent use of Brunswik's lens model to determine what physical qualities accurately communicate psychological traits has limited utility because it fails to consider the structured information provided by configural physical qualities that is central to Gibson's (1979) theory. We elaborate a developmental model of relationships between physical and psychological qualities that highlights research needed to identify configural physical qualities that may inform accurate perceptions. This model and tenets of the ecological theory yield several hypotheses regarding such qualities. Finally, we advocate the value of studying perceived affordances (opportunities for acting, interacting, or being acted upon) because this will focus attention on the neglected issue of contextual influences on social perception accuracy, and because affordances may be perceived more accurately than global personality traits.

Trait impressions as overgeneralized responses to adaptively significant facial qualities: evidence from connectionist modeling

Connectionist modeling experiments tested anomalous-face and baby-face overgeneralization hypotheses proposed to explain consensual trait impressions of faces. Activation of a neural network unit trained to respond to anomalous faces predicted impressions of normal adult faces varying in attractiveness as well as several elderly stereotypes. Activation of a neural network unit trained to respond to babies' faces predicted impressions of adults varying in babyfaceness as well as 1 elderly stereotype. Thus, similarities of normal adult faces to anomalous faces or babies' faces contribute to impressions of them quite apart from knowledge of overlapping social stereotypes. The evolutionary importance of appropriate responses to unfit individuals or babies is presumed to produce a strong response preparedness that is overgeneralized to faces resembling the unfit or babies.