When physical similarity matters: Mechanisms underlying affective learning generalization to the evaluation of novel faces

Acquisition and generalization of emotional and neural responses to faces associated with negative and positive feedback behaviours

Faces can acquire emotional meaning by learning to associate individuals with specific behaviors. Here, we investigated emotional evaluation and brain activations toward faces of persons who had given negative or positive evaluations to others. Furthermore, we investigated how emotional evaluations and brain activation generalize to perceptually similar faces. Valence ratings indicated learning and generalization effects for both positive and negative faces. Brain activation, measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), showed significantly increased activation in the fusiform gyrus (FG) to negatively associated faces but not positively associated ones. Remarkably, brain activation in FG to faces to which emotional meaning (negative and positive) was successfully generalized was decreased compared to neutral faces. This suggests that the emotional relevance of faces is not simply associated with increased brain activation in visual areas. While, at least for negative conditions, faces paired with negative feedback behavior are related to potentiated brain responses, the opposite is seen for perceptually very similar faces despite generalized emotional responses.

Distrust before first sight? Examining knowledge- and appearance-based effects of trustworthiness on the visual consciousness of faces

The present EEG study with 32 healthy participants investigated whether affective knowledge about a person influences the visual awareness of their face, additionally considering the impact of facial appearance. Faces differing in perceived trustworthiness based on appearance were associated with negative or neutral social information and shown as target stimuli in an attentional blink task. As expected, participants showed enhanced awareness of faces associated with negative compared to neutral social information. On the neurophysiological level, this effect was connected to differences in the time range of the early posterior negativity (EPN)-a component associated with enhanced attention and facilitated processing of emotional stimuli. The findings indicate that the social-affective relevance of a face based on emotional knowledge is accessed during a phase of attentional enhancement for conscious perception and can affect prioritization for awareness. In contrast, no clear evidence for influences of facial trustworthiness during the attentional blink was found.

Familiarity From Facial Appearance Leads to Hypoalgesia

Social context has been shown to influence pain perception. This study aimed to broaden this literature by investigating whether relevant social stimuli, such as faces with different levels of intrinsic (based on physical resemblance to known individuals) and episodic (acquired through a previous experience) familiarity, may lead to hypoalgesia. We hypothesized that familiarity, whether intrinsic or acquired through experience, would increase pain threshold and decrease pain intensity. Sixty-seven participants underwent pain induction (the cold pressor test) viewing previously seen faces (Episodic Group) or new faces (Non-episodic Group) that differed in the level of intrinsic familiarity (high vs low). Pain threshold was measured in seconds, while pain intensity was measured on a rating scale of 0 to 10. The results did not show an effect of episodic familiarity. However, compared to low, high intrinsic familiar faces had an attenuating effect on pain intensity, even after controlling for pain expectation. These results suggest that physical features conveying a higher feeling of familiarity induce a top-down hypoalgesic modulation, in line with the idea that familiarity may signal safety and that the presence of familiar others reduce perceived threat-related distress. This study provides further evidence on the social modulation of pain and contributes to the literature on first impressions' influence on social behavior. PERSPECTIVE: Consistent with the idea that familiar others signal safety and reduce the sense of threat, facial features conveying familiarity induce a top-down hypoalgesic modulation. This knowledge may contribute to understanding differences in pain perception in experimental and clinical contexts.

Face your heart: resting vagally mediated Heart Rate Variability Shapes Social Attributions from facial appearance

Phylogenetic theories suggest resting vagally mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV) as a biomarker for adaptive behavior in social encounters. Until now, no study has examined whether vmHRV can predict individual differences in inferring personality traits and intentions from facial appearance. To test this hypothesis, resting vmHRV was recorded in 83 healthy individuals before they rated a series of faces based on their first impression of trustworthiness, dominance, typicality, familiarity, caring, and attractiveness. We found an association between individual differences in vmHRV and social attributions from facial appearance. Specifically, higher levels of vmHRV predicted higher scores on ratings of caring and trustworthiness, suggesting that strangers’ faces are more likely to be perceived as safer. The present results suggest that higher levels of vmHRV (compared with lower levels of vmHRV) are associated with the tendency to minimize social evaluative threat and maximize affiliative social cues at a first glance of others’ faces.

Children show neural sensitivity to facial trustworthiness as measured by fast periodic visual stimulation

Adults exhibit neural responses over the visual occipito-temporal area in response to faces that vary in how trustworthy they appear. However, it is not yet known when a mature pattern of neural sensitivity can be seen in children. Using a fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) paradigm, face images were presented to 8-to-9-year-old children (an age group which shows development of trust impressions; N = 31) and adult (N = 33) participants at a rate of 6 Hz (6 face images per second). Within this sequence, an 'oddball' face differing in the level of facial trustworthiness compared to the other faces, was presented at a rate of 1 Hz (once per second). Children were sensitive to variations in facial trustworthiness, showing reliable and significant neural responses at 1 Hz in the absence of instructions to respond to facial trustworthiness. Additionally, the magnitude of children's and adults' neural responses was similar, with strong Bayesian evidence that implicit neural responses to facial trustworthiness did not differ across the groups, and therefore, that visual sensitivity to differences in facial trustworthiness can show mature patterns by this age. Thus, nine or less years of social experience, perceptual and/or cognitive development may be sufficient for adult-like neural sensitivity to facial trustworthiness to emerge. We also validate the use of the FPVS methodology to examine children's implicit face-based trust processing for the first time, which is especially valuable in developmental research because this paradigm requires no explicit instructions or responses from participants.

The influence of facial attractiveness and personal characteristics on imitation

Imitation plays a crucial role in learning and communication, although a little is known whether individuals imitate each other based on particular personality traits. Facial features and personal characteristics are the major components of personal impressions. This study adopted the color paradigm to explore the effect of the two factors on imitation. Experiment 1 examined the effect of facial attractiveness and face gender on imitation. The results showed that woman who appeared attractive drove imitation more than woman who did not. However, men who appeared attractive and unattractive differed insignificantly. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of facial attractiveness and personal characteristics on imitation. The results of Experiment 1 were verified, stating that positive personal characteristics drove imitation more than negative personal characteristics. The study found that facial attractiveness still affected imitation when characteristics information appeared. Regarding negative personal characteristics, individuals who appeared attractive drove imitation more than individuals who did not. The results indicate that imitation is automated, influenced not only by face types but also by personal characteristics.

The Effect of Moral Behavior on Facial Attractiveness

Purpose

Evaluating face attractiveness is a core aspect of face perception, which plays an important role in impression formation. A more reliable source of information in impression formation is moral behavior, which forms the primary basis for the comprehensive evaluation of others. Previous studies have found that one can easily form an association when faces and moral behaviors are presented together, which in turn affects facial attractiveness evaluation. However, little is known of the extent to which these learned associations affect facial attractiveness and whether the influence of moral behavior on facial attractiveness was related to facial appearance.

Methods

We used the associative learning paradigm and manipulated face presentation duration (Experiment 1 and Experiment 2) and response deadline (Experiment 2) to investigate these issues. Under these conditions, the association information was difficult to be retrieved. Participants learned associations between faces and scenes of moral behavior, and then evaluated facial attractiveness.

Results

We found that both moral behavior and facial appearance influence facial attractiveness under conditions where associated information was difficult to retrieve, and their effects increased with the increase of face presentation time. With increasing response deadlines, the effect of moral behavior on facial attractiveness increased. The influence of moral behavior on facial attractiveness was associated with facial appearance.

Conclusion

These results suggest that moral behavior continuously affects facial attractiveness. Our findings expand previous research by showing a robust influence of moral behavior on facial attractiveness evaluation, and highlight the important role of moral character in impression formation.

The influence of fake news on face-trait learning

Humans spontaneously attribute a wide range of traits to conspecifics based on their facial appearance. Unsurprisingly, previous findings indicate that this 'person evaluation' is affected by information provided about the target's past actions and behaviours. Strikingly, many news items shared on social media sites (e.g., Twitter) describe the actions of individuals who are often shown in accompanying images. This kind of material closely resembles that encountered by participants in previous studies of face-trait learning. We therefore sought to determine whether Twitter posts that pair facial images with favourable and unfavourable biographical information also modulate subsequent trait evaluation of the people depicted. We also assessed whether the effects of this information-valence manipulation were attenuated by the presence of the "disputed tag", introduced by Twitter as a means to combat the influence of fake-news. Across two preregistered experiments, we found that fictional tweets that paired facial images with details of the person's positive or negative actions affected the extent to which readers subsequently judged the faces depicted to be trustworthy. When the rating phase followed immediately after the study phase, the presence of the disputed tag attenuated the effect of the behavioural information (Experiment 1: N = 128; Mage = 34.06; 89 female, 36 male, 3 non-binary; 116 White British). However, when the rating phase was conducted after a 10-minute delay, the presence of the disputed tag had no significant effect (Experiment 2: N = 128; Mage = 29.12; 78 female, 44 male, 4 non-binary, 2 prefer not to say; 110 White British). Our findings suggest that disputed tags may have relatively little impact on the long-term face-trait learning that occurs via social media. As such, fake news stories may have considerable potential to shape users' person evaluation.

Face-to-trait inferences in Japanese children and adults based on Caucasian faces

Recently, many studies have indicated that humans make social evaluations from facial appearances instantaneously and automatically. Furthermore, such judgments play an important role in several social contexts. However, the mechanisms involved in the ability to form impressions from faces are still unknown, as is the extent to which these can be regarded as universal in perceiving impressions. In the current study, computer-generated Caucasian faces were used to assess the universality or cultural differences in impression formation among Japanese children and adults. This study hypothesized that impressions of trustworthiness and dominance may be more fundamental and universal, whereas the impression of competence may be more complex and culture-dependent. In Experiment 1a, 42 children aged 3-6 years were presented with 10 pairs of face images and asked which image in each pair was more trustworthy, dominant, or competent. Overall, it was found that as age increased, the rate of agreement of Japanese participants with the judgment of American participants, obtained in a previous study, increased. However, the agreement rate for competence was relatively low. Experiment 1b, conducted with 46 children, was a replication of Experiment 1a, and the results showed the same tendency. In Experiment 2, 45 Japanese adults made impression judgments on 19 pairs of face images identical to those used in Experiment 1b. The results suggested that while dominance was a dimension not easily influenced by developmental changes or culture, trustworthiness could be influenced by cultural differences in facial expression recognition. Therefore, different judgment criteria are used for children and adults. For competence, the agreement rate with Americans was relatively stable and low among the different age groups. This suggests that depending on the dimension of the trait, certain judgments are influenced by cultural context and, therefore, change criteria, while others are based on more universal criteria.

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.

How Perceived Similarity Moderates Sympathy and Pride Appeal in Organ Donation Messages

BACKGROUND

Organ transplantation is the only medical procedure that can save a person who is suffering from organ failure. However, the shortage of transplantable organs remains a universal problem. Although more than 90% of the America population supports the concept of organ donation, less than half are registered as donors.

METHODS

An online experiment (N = 224) was conducted to examine how perceived similarity moderates pride and sympathy appeal messages for organ donation. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Emotional appeal messages were respectively manipulated through emphasizing patient's suffering (sympathy) and organ donor's achievements (pride). A pretest was also performed on Amazon Mechanical Turk to ensure the effectiveness of emotional appeal message. Perceived similarity was achieved by presenting a picture of either a male or female individual with a neutral emotion to participants.

RESULTS

The study showed that perceived similarity was a positive predictor of intentions to become an organ donor. Furthermore, perceived similarity can moderate the effects of both sympathy and pride appeal messages on attitudes and intentions of organ donation.

CONCLUSIONS

This study found that perceived similarity could change people's behavioral intentions to become organ donors. Therefore, this study can inform potential strategies to persuade people to become organ donors through emphasizing perceived similarity and using emotional appeals.

Spontaneous first impressions emerge from brief training

People have a strong and reliable tendency to infer the character traits of strangers based solely on facial appearance. In five highly powered and pre-registered experiments, we investigate the relative merits of learning and nativist accounts of the origins of these first impressions. First, we test whether brief periods of training can establish consistent first impressions de novo. Using a novel paradigm with Greebles-a class of synthetic object with inter-exemplar variation that approximates that seen between individual faces-we show that participants quickly learn to associate appearance cues with trustworthiness (Experiments 1 and 2). In a further experiment, we show that participants easily learn a two-dimensional structure in which individuals are presented as simultaneously varying in both trustworthiness and competence (Experiment 3). Crucially, in the final two experiments (Experiments 4 and 5) we show that, once learned, these first impressions occur following very brief exposure (100 ms). These results demonstrate that first impressions can be rapidly learned and, once learned, take on features previously thought to hold only for innate first impressions (rapid availability). Taken together, these results highlight the plausibility of learning accounts of first impressions.

Young children learn first impressions of faces through social referencing

Previous research has demonstrated that the tendency to form first impressions from facial appearance emerges early in development. We examined whether social referencing is one route through which these consistent first impressions are acquired. In Study 1, we show that 5- to 7-year-old children are more likely to choose a target face previously associated with positive non-verbal signals as more trustworthy than a face previously associated with negative non-verbal signals. In Study 2, we show that children generalise this learning to novel faces who resemble those who have previously been the recipients of positive non-verbal behaviour. Taken together, these data show one means through which individuals within a community could acquire consistent, and potentially inaccurate, first impressions of others faces. In doing so, they highlight a route through which cultural transmission of first impressions can occur.

Lateral Attitude Change: Stalking the Elusive Displacement Effect

Recent theorizing (Glaser et al., 2015, Personality and Social Psychology Review) distinguishes two types of lateral attitude change (LAC): generalization, where explicit attitude change toward a focal object transfers to lateral (= related) objects, and displacement, where only lateral (but not focal) attitudes change. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that generalization versus displacement effects depend on acceptance versus rejection of focal attitude change. Participants (total n = 471) read positive and negative ratings of different products that served as focal attitude objects. Subsequent attitude change toward focal products generalized to lateral products as a function of similarity (Experiments 1–3) and of induced preference for consistency (Experiment. 3). However, manipulations designed to induce rejection of focal change by telling participants not to trust the information presented were not successful: Instead of displacement, they produced attenuated generalization (Experiments 1–3). Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Why do you attract me but not others? Retrieval of person knowledge and its generalization bring diverse judgments of facial attractiveness

Judgments of facial attractiveness play an important role in social interactions. However, it still remains unclear why these judgments are malleable. The present study aimed to understand whether the retrieval of person knowledge leads to different judgments of attractiveness of the same face. Event-related potentials and learning-recognition tasks were used to investigate the effects of person knowledge on facial attractiveness. The results showed that compared with familiar faces that were matched with negative person knowledge, those matched with positive person knowledge were evaluated as more attractive and evoked a larger early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive complex (LPC). Additionally, positive similar faces had the same behavioral results and evoked large LPC, while unfamiliar faces did not have any significant effects. These results indicate that the effect of person knowledge on facial attractiveness occurs from early to late stage of facial attractiveness processing, and this effect could be generalized based on the similarity of the face structure, which occurred at the late stage. This mechanism may explain why individuals form different judgments of facial attractiveness.

Individual differences in trust evaluations are shaped mostly by environments, not genes

People evaluate a stranger's trustworthiness from their facial features in a fraction of a second, despite common advice "not to judge a book by its cover." Evaluations of trustworthiness have critical and widespread social impact, predicting financial lending, mate selection, and even criminal justice outcomes. Consequently, understanding how people perceive trustworthiness from faces has been a major focus of scientific inquiry, and detailed models explain how consensus impressions of trustworthiness are driven by facial attributes. However, facial impression models do not consider variation between observers. Here, we develop a sensitive test of trustworthiness evaluation and use it to document substantial, stable individual differences in trustworthiness impressions. Via a twin study, we show that these individual differences are largely shaped by variation in personal experience, rather than genes or shared environments. Finally, using multivariate twin modeling, we show that variation in trustworthiness evaluation is specific, dissociating from other key facial evaluations of dominance and attractiveness. Our finding that variation in facial trustworthiness evaluation is driven mostly by personal experience represents a rare example of a core social perceptual capacity being predominantly shaped by a person's unique environment. Notably, it stands in sharp contrast to variation in facial recognition ability, which is driven mostly by genes. Our study provides insights into the development of the social brain, offers a different perspective on disagreement in trust in wider society, and motivates new research into the origins and potential malleability of face evaluation, a critical aspect of human social cognition.

Pain and satisfaction: healthcare providers' facial appearance matters

Trait inferences based solely on facial appearance affect many social decisions. Here we tested whether the effects of such inferences extend to the perception of physical sensations. In an actual clinical setting, we show that healthcare providers' facial appearance is a strong predictor of pain experienced by patients during a medical procedure. The effect was specific to familiarity: facial features of healthcare providers that convey feelings of familiarity were associated with a decrease in patients' perception of pain. In addition, caring appearance of the healthcare providers was significantly related to patients' satisfaction with the care they received. Besides indicating that rapid, unreflective trait inferences from facial appearance may affect important healthcare outcomes, these findings contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying social modulation of pain perception.

Arbitrary signals of trustworthiness - social judgments may rely on facial expressions even with experimentally manipulated valence

Generalization has been suggested as a basic mechanism in forming impressions about unfamiliar people. In this study, we investigated how social evaluations will be transferred to individual faces across contexts and to expressions across individuals. A total of 93 people (33 men, age: M = 29.95; SD = 13.74) were exposed to facial images which they had to evaluate. In the Association phase, we presented one individual with (1) a trustworthy, (2) an untrustworthy, (3) or an ambiguous expression, with either positive or negative descriptive sentence pairs. In the Evaluation phase participants were shown (1) a new individual with the same emotional facial expression as seen before, and (2) a neutral image of the previously presented individual. They were asked to judge the trustworthiness of each person. We found that the valence of the social description is transferred to both individuals and expressions. That is, the social evaluations (positive or negative) transferred between the images of two different individuals if they both displayed the same facial expression. The consistency between the facial expression and the description, however, had no effect on the evaluation of the same expression appearing on an unfamiliar face. Results suggest that in social evaluation of unfamiliar people invariant and dynamically changing facial traits are used to a similar extent and influence these judgements through the same associative process.

Do facial first impressions reflect a shared social reality?

Influential facial impression models have repeatedly shown that trustworthiness, youthful-attractiveness, and dominance dimensions subserve a wide variety of first impressions formed from strangers' faces, suggestive of a shared social reality. However, these models are built from impressions aggregated across observers. Critically, recent work has now shown substantial inter-observer differences in facial impressions, raising the important question of whether these dimensional models based on aggregated group data are meaningful at the individual observer level. We addressed this question with a novel case series approach, using factor analyses of ratings of twelve different traits to build individual models of facial impressions for different observers. Strikingly, three dimensions of trustworthiness, youthful/attractiveness, and competence/dominance appeared across the majority of these individual observer models, demonstrating that the dimensional approach is indeed meaningful at the individual level. Nonetheless, we also found differences in the stability of the competence/dominance dimension across observers. Taken together, results suggest that individual differences in impressions arise in the context of a largely common structure that supports a shared social reality.

Knowledge of Social Affiliations Biases Economic Decisions

An individual's reputation and group membership can produce automatic judgments and behaviors toward that individual. Whether an individual's social reputation impacts interactions with affiliates has yet to be demonstrated. We tested the hypothesis that during initial encounters with others, existing knowledge of their social network guides behavior toward them. Participants learned reputations (cooperate, defect, or equal mix) for virtual players through an iterated economic game (EG). Then, participants learned one novel friend for each player. The critical question was how participants treated the friends in a single-shot EG after the friend-learning phase. Participants tended to cooperate with friends of cooperators and defect on friends of defectors, indicative of a decision making bias based on memory for social affiliations. Interestingly, participants' explicit predictions of the friends' future behavior showed no such bias. Moreover, the bias to defect on friends of defectors was enhanced when affiliations were learned in a social context; participants who learned to associate novel faces with player faces during reinforcement learning did not show reputation-based bias for associates of defectors during single-shot EG. These data indicate that when faced with risky social decisions, memories of social connections influence behavior implicitly.

Judged and Remembered Trustworthiness of Faces Is Enhanced by Experiencing Multisensory Synchrony and Asynchrony in the Right Order

This work builds on the enfacement effect. This effect occurs when experiencing a rhythmic stimulation on one’s cheek while seeing someone else’s face being touched in a synchronous way. This typically leads to cognitive and social-cognitive effects similar to self-other merging. In two studies, we demonstrate that this multisensory stimulation can change the evaluation of the other’s face. In the first study, participants judged the stranger’s face and similar faces as being more trustworthy after synchrony, but not after asynchrony. Synchrony interacted with the order of the stroking; hence trustworthiness only changed when the synchronous stimulation occurred before the asynchronous one. In the second study, a synchronous stimulation caused participants to remember the stranger’s face as more trustworthy, but again only when the synchronous stimulation came before the asynchronous one. The results of both studies show that order of stroking creates a context in which multisensory synchrony can affect the trustworthiness of faces.

Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Prejudice Formation: The Role of Time-Dependent Memory Consolidation

Prejudice is generally thought to derive from learned, emotion-laden experiences. The mechanisms underlying the formation of prejudice over time, however, remain unknown. In the present research, we proposed and tested hypotheses regarding prejudice formation derived from research on memory consolidation and social perception. We hypothesized that time-dependent memory consolidation would produce better implicit memory for negative out-group information and positive in-group information, compared with negative in-group information and positive out-group information. Fifty undergraduates learned positive and negative information about racial in-group (Latino) and out-group (African American) targets. Participants returned after both a short time delay (2-6 hr after the learning session) and a long time delay (48 hr after the learning session) to complete a lexical decision task. Results demonstrated that participants responded to information consistent with an in-group bias faster after a long time delay than after a short time delay. Our findings have important implications for the study of social perception and memory consolidation.

Influences of appearance-behaviour congruity on memory and social judgements

Prior work shows that appearance-behaviour congruity impacts memory and evaluations. Building upon prior work, we assessed influences of appearance-behaviour congruity on source memory and judgement strength to illustrate ways congruity effects permeate social cognition. We paired faces varying on trustworthiness with valenced behaviours to create congruent and incongruent face-behaviour pairs. Young and older adults remembered congruent pairs better than incongruent, but both were remembered better than pairs with faces rated average in appearance. This suggests that multiple, even conflicting, valenced cues improve memory over receiving fewer cues. Consistent with our manipulation of facial trustworthiness, congruity effects were present in the strength of trustworthiness-related but not dominance judgements. Subtle age differences emerged in congruity effects when learning about others, with older adults showing effects for approach judgements given both high and low arousal behaviours. Young adults had congruity effects for approach, prosociality and trustworthiness judgements, given high arousal behaviours only. These findings deepen our understanding of how appearance-behaviour congruity impacts memory for and evaluations of others.

Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance

Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributing social and personality characteristics from facial appearance. Recent studies have shown that surprisingly little time and effort are needed to arrive at this consensus. Here we review recent research on social attributions from faces. Section I outlines data-driven methods capable of identifying the perceptual basis of consensus in social attributions from faces (e.g., What makes a face look threatening?). Section II describes nonperceptual determinants of social attributions (e.g., person knowledge and incidental associations). Section III discusses evidence that attributions from faces predict important social outcomes in diverse domains (e.g., investment decisions and leader selection). In Section IV, we argue that the diagnostic validity of these attributions has been greatly overstated in the literature. In the final section, we offer an account of the functional significance of these attributions.

Lateral Attitude Change

The authors propose a framework distinguishing two types of lateral attitude change (LAC): (a) generalization effects, where attitude change toward a focal object transfers to related objects, and (b) displacement effects, where only related attitudes change but the focal attitude does not change. They bring together examples of LAC from various domains of research, outline the conditions and underlying processes of each type of LAC, and develop a theoretical framework that enables researchers to study LAC more systematically in the future. Compared with established theories of attitude change, the LAC framework focuses on lateral instead of focal attitude change and encompasses both generalization and displacement. Novel predictions and designs for studying LAC are presented.