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Nørkær E, Gobbo S, Roald T, Starrfelt R. Disentangling developmental prosopagnosia: A scoping review of terms, tools and topics. Cortex 2024; 176:161-193. [PMID: 38795651 DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2024.04.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/20/2023] [Revised: 03/08/2024] [Accepted: 04/30/2024] [Indexed: 05/28/2024]
Abstract
The goal of this preregistered scoping review is to create an overview of the research on developmental prosopagnosia (DP). Through analysis of all empirical studies of DP in adults, we investigate 1) how DP is conceptualized and defined, 2) how individuals are classified with DP and 3) which aspects of DP are investigated in the literature. We reviewed 224 peer-reviewed studies of DP. Our analysis of the literature reveals that while DP is predominantly defined as a lifelong face recognition impairment in the absence of acquired brain injury and intellectual/cognitive problems, there is far from consensus on the specifics of the definition with some studies emphasizing e.g., deficits in face perception, discrimination and/or matching as core characteristics of DP. These differences in DP definitions is further reflected in the vast heterogeneity in classification procedures. Only about half of the included studies explicitly state how they classify individuals with DP, and these studies adopt 40 different assessment tools. The two most frequently studied aspects of DP are the role of holistic processing and the specificity of face processing, and alongside a substantial body of neuroimaging studies of DP, this paints a picture of a research field whose scientific interests and aims are rooted in cognitive neuropsychology and neuroscience. We argue that these roots - alongside the heterogeneity in DP definition and classification - may have limited the scope and interest of DP research unnecessarily, and we point to new avenues of research for the field.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erling Nørkær
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
| | - Silvia Gobbo
- Department of Psychology, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Italy
| | - Tone Roald
- Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
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2
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Jones AL, Shiramizu V, Jones BC. Decoding the language of first impressions: Comparing models of first impressions of faces derived from free-text descriptions and trait ratings. Br J Psychol 2024. [PMID: 38886926 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12717] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/29/2023] [Revised: 05/24/2024] [Accepted: 06/01/2024] [Indexed: 06/20/2024]
Abstract
First impressions formed from facial appearance predict important social outcomes. Existing models of these impressions indicate they are underpinned by dimensions of Valence and Dominance, and are typically derived by applying data reduction methods to explicit ratings of faces for a range of traits. However, this approach is potentially problematic because the trait ratings may not fully capture the dimensions on which people spontaneously assess faces. Here, we used natural language processing to extract 'topics' directly from participants' free-text descriptions (i.e., their first impressions) of 2222 face images. Two topics emerged, reflecting first impressions related to positive emotional valence and warmth (Topic 1) and negative emotional valence and potential threat (Topic 2). Next, we investigated how these topics were related to Valence and Dominance components derived from explicit trait ratings. Collectively, these components explained only ~44% of the variance in the topics extracted from free-text descriptions and suggested that first impressions are underpinned by correlated valence dimensions that subsume the content of existing trait-rating-based models. Natural language offers a promising new avenue for understanding social cognition, and future work can examine the predictive utility of natural language and traditional data-driven models for impressions in varying social contexts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alex L Jones
- School of Psychology, Swansea University, Swansea, UK
| | - Victor Shiramizu
- Department of Psychological Sciences & Health, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
| | - Benedict C Jones
- Department of Psychological Sciences & Health, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
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3
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Goel S, Jara-Ettinger J, Ong DC, Gendron M. Face and context integration in emotion inference is limited and variable across categories and individuals. Nat Commun 2024; 15:2443. [PMID: 38499519 PMCID: PMC10948792 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-46670-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2022] [Accepted: 03/05/2024] [Indexed: 03/20/2024] Open
Abstract
The ability to make nuanced inferences about other people's emotional states is central to social functioning. While emotion inferences can be sensitive to both facial movements and the situational context that they occur in, relatively little is understood about when these two sources of information are integrated across emotion categories and individuals. In a series of studies, we use one archival and five empirical datasets to demonstrate that people could be integrating, but that emotion inferences are just as well (and sometimes better) captured by knowledge of the situation alone, while isolated facial cues are insufficient. Further, people integrate facial cues more for categories for which they most frequently encounter facial expressions in everyday life (e.g., happiness). People are also moderately stable over time in their reliance on situational cues and integration of cues and those who reliably utilize situation cues more also have better situated emotion knowledge. These findings underscore the importance of studying variability in reliance on and integration of cues.
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Affiliation(s)
- Srishti Goel
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, 100 College St, New Haven, CT, USA.
| | - Julian Jara-Ettinger
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, 100 College St, New Haven, CT, USA
- Wu Tsai Institute, Yale University, 100 College St, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Desmond C Ong
- Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, 108 E Dean Keeton St, Austin, TX, USA
| | - Maria Gendron
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, 100 College St, New Haven, CT, USA.
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4
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Bell L, Duchaine B, Susilo T. Dissociations between face identity and face expression processing in developmental prosopagnosia. Cognition 2023; 238:105469. [PMID: 37216847 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105469] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2021] [Revised: 04/21/2023] [Accepted: 04/24/2023] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
Individuals with developmental prosopagnosia (DPs) experience severe and lifelong deficits recognising faces, but whether their deficits are selective to the processing of face identity or extend to the processing of face expression remains unclear. Clarifying this issue is important for understanding DP impairments and advancing theories of face processing. We compared identity and expression processing in a large sample of DPs (N = 124) using three different matching tasks that each assessed identity and expression processing with identical experimental formats. We ran each task in upright and inverted orientations and we measured inversion effects to assess the integrity of upright-specific face processes. We report three main results. First, DPs showed large deficits at discriminating identity but only subtle deficits at discriminating expression. Second, DPs showed a reduced inversion effect for identity but a normal inversion effect for expression. Third, DPs' performance on the expression tasks were linked to autism traits, but their performance on the identity tasks were not. These results constitute several dissociations between identity and expression processing in DP, and they are consistent with the view that the core impairment in DP is highly selective to identity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lauren Bell
- Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
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5
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Van der Biest M, Cracco E, Riva P, Valentini E. Should I trust you? Investigating trustworthiness judgements of painful facial expressions. Acta Psychol (Amst) 2023; 235:103893. [PMID: 36966639 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103893] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/19/2022] [Revised: 03/14/2023] [Accepted: 03/15/2023] [Indexed: 04/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Past research indicates that patients' reports of pain are often met with skepticism and that observers tend to underestimate patients' pain. The mechanisms behind these biases are not yet fully understood. One relevant domain of inquiry is the interaction between the emotional valence of a stranger's expression and the onlooker's trustworthiness judgment. The emotion overgeneralization hypothesis posits that when facial cues of valence are clear, individuals displaying negative expressions (e.g., disgust) are perceived as less trustworthy than those showing positive facial expressions (e.g., happiness). Accordingly, we hypothesized that facial expressions of pain (like disgust) would be judged more untrustworthy than facial expressions of happiness. In two separate studies, we measured trustworthiness judgments of four different facial expressions (i.e., neutral, happiness, pain, and disgust), displayed by both computer-generated and real faces, via both explicit self-reported ratings (Study 1) and implicit motor trajectories in a trustworthiness categorization task (Study 2). Ratings and categorization findings partly support our hypotheses. Our results reveal for the first time that when judging strangers' facial expressions, both negative expressions were perceived as more untrustworthy than happy expressions. They also indicate that facial expressions of pain are perceived as untrustworthy as disgust expressions, at least for computer-generated faces. These findings are relevant to the clinical setting because they highlight how overgeneralization of emotional facial expressions may subtend an early perceptual bias exerted by the patient's emotional facial cues onto the clinician's cognitive appraisal process.
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Swe DC, Palermo R, Gwinn OS, Bell J, Nakanishi A, Collova J, Sutherland CAM. Trustworthiness perception is mandatory: Task instructions do not modulate fast periodic visual stimulation trustworthiness responses. J Vis 2022; 22:17. [PMID: 36315159 PMCID: PMC9631496 DOI: 10.1167/jov.22.11.17] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022] Open
Abstract
Although it is often assumed that humans spontaneously respond to the trustworthiness of others’ faces, it is still unclear whether responses to facial trust are mandatory or can be modulated by instructions. Considerable scientific interest lies in understanding whether trust processing is mandatory, given the societal consequences of biased trusting behavior. We tested whether neural responses indexing trustworthiness discrimination depended on whether the task involved focusing on facial trustworthiness or not, using a fast periodic visual stimulation electroencephalography oddball paradigm with a neural marker of trustworthiness discrimination at 1 Hz. Participants judged faces on size without any reference to trust, explicitly formed impressions of facial trust, or were given a financial lending context that primed trust, without explicit trust judgement instructions. Significant trustworthiness discrimination responses at 1 Hz were found in all three conditions, demonstrating the robust nature of trustworthiness discrimination at the neural level. Moreover, no effect of task instruction was observed, with Bayesian analyses providing moderate to decisive evidence that task instruction did not affect trustworthiness discrimination. Our finding that visual trustworthiness discrimination is mandatory points to the remarkable spontaneity of trustworthiness processing, providing clues regarding why these often unreliable impressions are ubiquitous.
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Affiliation(s)
- Derek C Swe
- School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.,
| | - Romina Palermo
- School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.,
| | - O Scott Gwinn
- College of Education, Psychology, and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.,
| | - Jason Bell
- School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.,
| | - Anju Nakanishi
- School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.,
| | - Jemma Collova
- School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.,
| | - Clare A M Sutherland
- School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.,School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, King's College, Aberdeen, Scotland.,
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Lau WK, Sauter M, Huckauf A. Small Pupils Lead to Lower Judgements of a Person’s Characteristics for Exaggerated, but Not for Realistic Pupils. Behav Sci (Basel) 2022; 12:bs12080283. [PMID: 36004854 PMCID: PMC9405288 DOI: 10.3390/bs12080283] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/11/2022] [Revised: 08/03/2022] [Accepted: 08/10/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
Our eyes convey information about a person. The pupils may provide information regarding our emotional states when presented along with different emotional expressions. We examined the effects of pupil size and vergence on inferring other people’s characteristics in neutral expression eyes. Pupil sizes were manipulated by overlaying black disks onto the pupils of the original eye images. The disk area was then changed to create small, medium, and large pupils. Vergence was simulated by shifting the medium-sized disks nasally in one eye. Pupil sizes were exaggerated for Experiment 1 and followed values from the literature for Experiment 2. The first Purkinje image from the eye photos in Experiment 2 was kept to preserve image realism. The characteristics measured were sex, age, attractiveness, trustworthiness, intelligence, valence, and arousal. Participants completed one of two online experiments and rated eight eye pictures with differently sized pupils and with vergence eyes. Both experiments were identical except for the stimuli designs. Results from Experiment 1 revealed rating differences between pupil sizes for all characteristics except sex, age, and arousal. Specifically, eyes with extremely small pupil sizes and artificial vergence received the lowest ratings compared to medium and large pupil sizes. Results from Experiment 2 only indicated weak effects of pupil size and vergence, particularly for intelligence ratings. We conclude that the pupils can influence how characteristics of another person are perceived and may be regarded as important social signals in subconscious social interaction processes. However, the effects may be rather small for neutral expressions.
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Face processing still predicts reading ability: evidence from developmental prosopagnosia. A reply to Gerlach and Starrfelt (2022). Cortex 2022; 154:340-347. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2022.06.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/12/2022] [Revised: 06/23/2022] [Accepted: 06/23/2022] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
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9
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Cook R, Over H. Why is the literature on first impressions so focused on White faces? ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2021; 8:211146. [PMID: 34567592 PMCID: PMC8456137 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211146] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/19/2021] [Accepted: 09/01/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
We spontaneously attribute to strangers a wide variety of character traits based on their facial appearance. While these first impressions have little or no basis in reality, they exert a strong influence over our behaviour. Cognitive scientists have revealed a great deal about first impressions from faces including their factor structure, the cues on which they are based, the neurocognitive mechanisms responsible, and their developmental trajectory. In this field, authors frequently strive to remove as much ethnic variability from stimulus sets as possible. Typically, this convention means that participants are asked to judge the likely traits of White faces only. In the present article, we consider four possible reasons for the lack of facial diversity in this literature and find that it is unjustified. Next, we illustrate how the focus on White faces has undermined scientific efforts to understand first impressions from faces and argue that it reinforces socially regressive ideas about 'race' and status. We go on to articulate our concern that opportunities may be lost to leverage the knowledge derived from the study of first impressions against the dire consequences of prejudice and discrimination. Finally, we highlight some promising developments in the field.
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Affiliation(s)
- Richard Cook
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX, UK
| | - Harriet Over
- Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK
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10
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Carragher DJ, Thomas NA, Nicholls MER. The dissociable influence of social context on judgements of facial attractiveness and trustworthiness. Br J Psychol 2021; 112:902-933. [PMID: 33742452 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12501] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2020] [Revised: 02/23/2021] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
The cheerleader effect occurs when the same face is rated to be more attractive when it is seen in a group compared to when seen alone. We investigated whether this phenomenon also occurs for trustworthiness judgements, and examined how these effects are influenced by the characteristics of the individual being evaluated and those of the group they are seen in. Across three experiments, we reliably replicated the cheerleader effect. Most faces became more attractive in a group. Yet, the size of the cheerleader effect that each face experienced was not related to its own attractiveness, nor to the attractiveness of the group or the group's digitally averaged face. We discuss the implications of our findings for the hierarchical encoding and contrast mechanisms that have previously been used to explain the cheerleader effect. Surprisingly, judgements of facial trustworthiness did not experience a 'cheerleader effect'. Instead, we found that untrustworthy faces became significantly more trustworthy in all groups, while there was no change for faces that were already trustworthy alone. Taken together, our results demonstrate that social context can have a dissociable influence on our first impressions, depending on the trait being evaluated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J Carragher
- College of Education, Psychology, and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
| | - Nicole A Thomas
- College of Education, Psychology, and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.,Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Michael E R Nicholls
- College of Education, Psychology, and Social Work, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
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11
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Perizzolo Pointet VC, Moser DA, Vital M, Rusconi Serpa S, Todorov A, Schechter DS. Violence Exposure Is Associated With Atypical Appraisal of Threat Among Women: An EEG Study. Front Psychol 2021; 11:576852. [PMID: 33510667 PMCID: PMC7835125 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.576852] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2020] [Accepted: 11/23/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Introduction The present study investigates the association of lifetime interpersonal violence (IPV) exposure, related posttraumatic stress disorder (IPV-PTSD), and appraisal of the degree of threat posed by facial avatars. Methods We recorded self-rated responses and high-density electroencephalography (HD-EEG) among women, 16 of whom with lifetime IPV-PTSD and 14 with no PTSD, during a face-evaluation task that displayed male face avatars varying in their degree of threat as rated along dimensions of dominance and trustworthiness. Results The study found a significant association between lifetime IPV exposure, under-estimation of dominance, and over-estimation of trustworthiness. Characterization of EEG microstates supported that lifetime IPV-PTSD modulates emotional appraisal, specifically in encoding and decoding processing associated with N170 and LPP evoked potentials. EEG source localization demonstrated an overactivation of the limbic system, in particular the parahippocampal gyrus, in response to non-threatening avatars. Additionally, dysfunctional involvement of attention-related processing anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) was found in response to relatively trustworthy avatars in IPV-PTSD individuals compared with non-PTSD controls. Discussion This study showed that IPV exposure and related PTSD modulate individuals' evaluation of facial characteristics suggesting threat. Atypical processing of these avatar characteristics was marked by group differences in brain regions linked to facial processing, emotion regulation, and memory.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Dominik Andrea Moser
- University Service of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Lausanne University Medical Center, Lausanne, Switzerland.,Institute of Psychology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
| | - Marylène Vital
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Geneva Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Sandra Rusconi Serpa
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Alexander Todorov
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States
| | - Daniel Scott Schechter
- Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.,University Service of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Lausanne University Medical Center, Lausanne, Switzerland.,Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University Langone School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States
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12
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Bagnis A, Caffo E, Cipolli C, De Palma A, Farina G, Mattarozzi K. Judging health care priority in emergency situations: Patient facial appearance matters. Soc Sci Med 2020; 260:113180. [PMID: 32682206 DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113180] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Revised: 05/20/2020] [Accepted: 06/27/2020] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
RATIONALE Extensive research has shown that implicit trait inferences from facial appearance can bias everyday life in a pervasive way, influencing our decisions in different social contexts such as mate choice, political vote and criminal sentence. In situations characterized by time pressure and scant information, decisions based on inferences from facial appearance may have particularly critical and serious consequences, such as in emergency healthcare. No studies today have investigated this aspect in an actual emergency. OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to go beyond this gap and to determine whether implicit inferences from patients' facial appearance could be predictive of disparities in clinical evaluations and priority of treatment. METHODS In total, 183 cases of patients were evaluated by independent judges at zero acquaintance on the basis of different implicit facial appearance-based inferences, including trustworthiness and distress. Color-based priority code (White, Green, or Yellow) attributed by the triage nurse at the end of the registration process were recorded. RESULTS Our results showed that more trustworthy- and distressed- looking patients' faces have been associated with a higher priority code. CONCLUSIONS The present study shows that specific facial appearance-based inferences influence the attribution of priority code in healthcare that require quick decisions based on scarce clinical information such as in emergency. These results suggest the importance to bring to the attention of the healthcare professionals' the possibility of being victims of implicit inferences, and prompt to design educational interventions capable to increase their awareness of this bias in clinical evaluation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arianna Bagnis
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialistic Medicine, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Italy.
| | - Ernesto Caffo
- Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
| | - Carlo Cipolli
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialistic Medicine, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Italy
| | | | - Gabriele Farina
- Department of Emergency, Medicina d'Urgenza e Pronto Soccorso, Policlinico S. Orsola-Malpighi, Bologna, Italy
| | - Katia Mattarozzi
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialistic Medicine, Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, Italy
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13
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Albohn DN, Adams RB. Emotion Residue in Neutral Faces: Implications for Impression Formation. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PERSONALITY SCIENCE 2020. [DOI: 10.1177/1948550620923229] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Despite the prevalent use of neutral faces in expression research, the term neutral still remains ill-defined and understudied. A general assumption is that one’s overt attempt to pose a nonexpressive face results in a neutral display, one devoid of any expressive information. Ample research has demonstrated that nonexpressive faces do convey meaning, however, through emotion-resembling appearance. Here, we examined whether prior expressive information lingers on a face, in the form of emotion residue, and whether despite overt attempts to display a neutral face, these subtle emotion cues influence trait impressions. Across three studies, we found that explicit attempts at posing neutral displays retained emotion residue from a prior expression. This residue in turn significantly impacted the impressions formed of these otherwise “neutral” displays. We discuss implications of this work for better understanding how accurate impressions are derived from the so-called neutral faces and underscore theoretical and methodological considerations for future research.
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14
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Chang SAA, Baskin-Sommers A. Living in a Disadvantaged Neighborhood Affects Neural Processing of Facial Trustworthiness. Front Psychol 2020; 11:409. [PMID: 32273859 PMCID: PMC7115212 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00409] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/17/2019] [Accepted: 02/24/2020] [Indexed: 11/20/2022] Open
Abstract
Neighborhood disorder (i.e., physical or social decay) is associated with decreased trust, which reinforces criminal behavior among some individuals in these communities. However, past research largely is descriptive and has not measured processes underlying trust. Using behavioral and neural indices [the late positive potential (LPP), a marker of salience elaboration] in a sample of adults (N = 55), we examined the association between perceived neighborhood disorder and facial trustworthiness perception as well as the potential moderating role of trustworthiness perception on the association between PND and criminal behavior. Individuals with higher perceived neighborhood disorder displayed less LPP differentiation between untrustworthy and trustworthy faces. Moreover, individuals with higher perceived neighborhood disorder and less LPP differentiation were less likely to commit a variety of crimes, whereas those with higher perceptions of neighborhood disorder and high LPP differentiation were more likely to commit a variety of crimes. Combined, these findings suggest that similarly processing trustworthy and untrustworthy faces, as indexed by less LPP differentiation, may reflect an adaptation among those with higher perceived neighborhood disorder that mitigates against deviant behavior and contacts with the law. Understanding the intersection between neighborhood characteristics and individual-level cognitive-affective processing may provide insight into what shapes beliefs and behaviors about important social information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shou-An A Chang
- Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States
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15
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Roitblat Y, Cohensedgh S, Frig-Levinson E, Cohen M, Dadbin K, Shohed C, Shvartsman D, Shterenshis M. Emotional expressions with minimal facial muscle actions. Report 2: Recognition of emotions. CURRENT PSYCHOLOGY 2020. [DOI: 10.1007/s12144-020-00691-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/17/2022]
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16
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Zhang D, Lin H, Perrett DI. Apparent Emotional Expression Explains the Effects of Head Posture on Perceived Trustworthiness and Dominance, but a Measure of Facial Width Does Not. Perception 2020; 49:422-438. [DOI: 10.1177/0301006620909286] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
Interpreting the personality and the disposition of people is important for social interaction. Both emotional expression and facial width are known to affect personality perception. Moreover, both the apparent emotional expression and the apparent width-to-height ratio of the face change with head tilt. We investigated how head tilt affects judgements of trustworthiness and dominance and whether such trait judgements reflect apparent emotion or facial width. Sixty-seven participants rated the dominance, emotion, and trustworthiness of 24 faces posing with different head tilts while maintaining eye gaze at the camera. Both the 30° up and 20° down head postures were perceived as less trustworthy and more dominant (less submissive) than the head-level posture. Change in perceived trustworthiness and submissiveness with head tilt correlated with change in apparent emotional positivity but not change in facial width. Hence, our analysis suggests that apparent emotional expression provides a better explanation of perceived trustworthiness and dominance compared with cues to facial structure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dongyu Zhang
- School of Software, Dalian University of Technology, Liaoning, China; School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
| | - Hongfei Lin
- School of Computer Science and Technology, Dalian University of Technology, Liaoning, China
| | - David I. Perrett
- School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
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17
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Shen X, Mann TC, Ferguson MJ. Beware a dishonest face?: Updating face-based implicit impressions using diagnostic behavioral information. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2020. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103888] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/25/2022]
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18
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Eldaief MC, Perez DL, Quimby M, Hochberg D, Touroutoglou A, Barrett LF, Dickerson BC. Atrophy in Distinct Corticolimbic Networks Subserving Socioaffective Behavior in Semantic Variant Primary Progressive Aphasia. Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord 2020; 49:589-597. [PMID: 33691310 PMCID: PMC8812818 DOI: 10.1159/000511341] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/26/2020] [Accepted: 09/03/2020] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Although traditionally conceptualized as a language disorder, semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) is often accompanied by significant behavioral and affective symptoms which considerably increase disease morbidity. Specifically, these neuropsychiatric symptoms are characterized by breaches in normative socioaffective function, for example, an inability to read social cues, excessive trusting of others, and decreased empathy. Our prior neuroimaging work identified 3 corticolimbic networks anchored in the amygdala, temporal pole, and frontoinsular cortex: an affiliation network, theorized to mediate social approach behavior; an aversion network, theorized to subserve the appraisal of social threat; and a perception network, theorized to mediate the detection of social cues. We hy-pothesized that degeneration of these networks could provide neuroanatomical substrates for socioaffective deficits in svPPA. METHODS We examined hypothesized relationships between subscores on the Social Impairment Rating Scale (SIRS) and atrophy in each of these 3 networks in a group of 16 svPPA patients (using matched cognitively normal controls as a reference). RESULTS Consistent with our predictions, the magnitude of atrophy in the affiliation network in svPPA patients correlated with the SIRS subscore of socioemotional detachment, while the magnitude of atrophy in the aversion network in svPPA patients correlated with the SIRS subscore of inappropriate trusting. We did not find the predicted association between perception network atrophy and the SIRS subscore of lack of attention to social cues. CONCLUSION These findings highlight specific socioaffective deficits in svPPA and provide a neuroanatomical basis for these impairments by linking them to networks commonly targeted in this disorder.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mark C. Eldaief
- Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA,Division of Neuropsychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Center for Brain Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - David L. Perez
- Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA,Division of Neuropsychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Cognitive Behavioral Neurology Unit, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA
| | - Megan Quimby
- Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Daisy Hochberg
- Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Alexandra Touroutoglou
- Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA
| | - Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA,Division of Psychiatric Neuroimaging, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston MA USA
| | - Bradford C. Dickerson
- Frontotemporal Disorders Unit and Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA
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Mogilski JK, Vrabel J, Mitchell VE, Welling LL. The primacy of trust within romantic relationships: Evidence from conjoint analysis of HEXACO-derived personality profiles. EVOL HUM BEHAV 2019. [DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.04.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/10/2023]
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Rossion B, Taubert J. What can we learn about human individual face recognition from experimental studies in monkeys? Vision Res 2019; 157:142-158. [DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2018.03.012] [Citation(s) in RCA: 27] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/01/2017] [Revised: 03/22/2018] [Accepted: 03/29/2018] [Indexed: 10/28/2022]
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Colonnello V, Mattarozzi K, Russo PM. Emotion recognition in medical students: effects of facial appearance and care schema activation. MEDICAL EDUCATION 2019; 53:195-205. [PMID: 30467891 DOI: 10.1111/medu.13760] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2018] [Revised: 08/06/2018] [Accepted: 09/18/2018] [Indexed: 05/23/2023]
Abstract
CONTEXT Identifying the factors that may interfere with or sharpen the ability to recognise emotions when observing patients is a critical goal in medical education. This study addressed these issues by investigating the effects of facial appearance bias on medical students' emotion recognition (Experiment 1) and whether such bias is modulated by the activation of relational caregiving schema (Experiment 2). METHODS In Experiment 1, medical students were asked to recognise the emotions expressed by individuals differing in facial appearance (trustworthy, neutral and untrustworthy). In Experiment 2, they completed the same type of emotion recognition task after activating and anchoring themselves to the representation of the relational/human competences typical of a competent professional caregiver or after a control non-representation condition. RESULTS In both experiments, emotion recognition was affected by facial appearance bias: medical students were less accurate and slower in their recognition of emotions displayed by untrustworthy-looking individuals than in their recognition of emotions exhibited by individuals evoking more positive inferences. In Experiment 2, the activation of care schema enhanced medical students' emotion recognition ability regardless of facial appearance-based inferences. CONCLUSIONS Medical students' emotion recognition is affected by appearance-based bias, but such bias may be weakened by techniques that harness medical students' personal affective/relational and representational resources. Thus, the results provide a basis for designing curricula aimed at challenging implicit negative bias and promoting medical students' emotion recognition ability starting in the early stages of their education.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valentina Colonnello
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Katia Mattarozzi
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Paolo M Russo
- Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
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22
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Wegrzyn M, Garlichs A, Heß RWK, Woermann FG, Labudda K. The hidden identity of faces: a case of lifelong prosopagnosia. BMC Psychol 2019; 7:4. [PMID: 30670082 PMCID: PMC6343346 DOI: 10.1186/s40359-019-0278-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/19/2018] [Accepted: 01/10/2019] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Not being able to recognize a person's face is a highly debilitating condition from which people with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) suffer their entire life. Here we describe the case of J, a 30 year old woman who reports being unable to recognize her parents, her husband, or herself in the mirror. CASE PRESENTATION We set out to assess the severity of J's prosopagnosia using tests with unfamiliar as well as familiar faces and investigated whether impaired configural processing explains her deficit. To assess the specificity of the impairment, we tested J's performance when evaluating emotions, intentions, and the attractiveness and likability of faces. Detailed testing revealed typical brain activity patterns for faces and normal object recognition skills, and no evidence of any brain injury. However, compared to a group of matched controls, J showed severe deficits in learning new faces, and in recognizing familiar faces when only inner features were available. Her recognition of uncropped faces with blurred features was within the normal range, indicating preserved configural processing when peripheral features are available. J was also unimpaired when evaluating intentions and emotions in faces. In line with healthy controls, J rated more average faces as more attractive. However, she was the only one to rate them as less likable, indicating a preference for more distinctive and easier to recognize faces. CONCLUSIONS Taken together, the results illustrate both the severity and the specificity of DP in a single case. While DP is a heterogeneous disorder, an inability to integrate the inner features of the face into a whole might be the best explanation for the difficulties many individuals with prosopagnosia experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martin Wegrzyn
- Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
| | - Annika Garlichs
- Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
| | | | | | - Kirsten Labudda
- Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany
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Jacquet PO, Safra L, Wyart V, Baumard N, Chevallier C. The ecological roots of human susceptibility to social influence: a pre-registered study investigating the impact of early-life adversity. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2019; 6:180454. [PMID: 30800337 PMCID: PMC6366227 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.180454] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/20/2018] [Accepted: 11/28/2018] [Indexed: 05/12/2023]
Abstract
There is considerable variability in the degree to which individuals rely on their peers to make decisions. Although theoretical models predict that environmental risks shift the cost-benefit trade-off associated with social information use, this idea has received little empirical support. Here we aim to test the effect of childhood environmental adversity on humans' susceptibility to follow others' opinion in the context of a standard face evaluation task. Results collected in a pilot study involving 121 adult participants tested online showed that susceptibility to social influence and childhood environmental adversity are positively associated. Computational analyses further confirmed that this effect is not explained by the fact that participants exposed to early adversity produce noisier decisions overall but that they are indeed more likely to follow the group's opinion. To test the robustness of these findings, a pre-registered direct replication using an optimal sample size was run. The results obtained from 262 participants in the pre-registered study did not reveal a significant association between childhood adversity and task performance but the meta-analysis ran on both the pilot and the pre-registered study replicated the initial finding. This work provides experimental evidence for an association between individuals' past ecology and their susceptibility to social influence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pierre O. Jacquet
- Laboratoire de neurosciences cognitives, Département d’études cognitives, École normale supérieure, INSERM, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France
- Institut Jean Nicod, Département d’études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Lou Safra
- Laboratoire de neurosciences cognitives, Département d’études cognitives, École normale supérieure, INSERM, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Valentin Wyart
- Laboratoire de neurosciences cognitives, Département d’études cognitives, École normale supérieure, INSERM, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Nicolas Baumard
- Institut Jean Nicod, Département d’études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France
| | - Coralie Chevallier
- Laboratoire de neurosciences cognitives, Département d’études cognitives, École normale supérieure, INSERM, PSL Research University, 75005 Paris, France
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24
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Abstract
This paper introduces a strategic element into the dictator game by allowing recipients to select their dictator. Recipients are presented with the photographs of two dictators and the envelopes containing their allocations, and are then asked to select which dictator’s gift they would like to receive. The recipient is paid the contents of the envelope they select. The photographs carry information about the gender and race/ethnicity of the dictators, and we ask an independent sample of raters to evaluate the photographs for other characteristics. While gender and ethnicity do not affect the recipient’s choice, one characteristic inferred from the photos makes them significantly more likely to be selected: Their perceived reliability.
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25
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Jacquet PO, Wyart V, Desantis A, Hsu YF, Granjon L, Sergent C, Waszak F. Human susceptibility to social influence and its neural correlates are related to perceived vulnerability to extrinsic morbidity risks. Sci Rep 2018; 8:13347. [PMID: 30190581 PMCID: PMC6127093 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-31619-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/13/2018] [Accepted: 08/10/2018] [Indexed: 01/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Humans considerably vary in the degree to which they rely on their peers to make decisions. Why? Theoretical models predict that environmental risks shift the cost-benefit trade-off associated with the exploitation of others' behaviours (public information), yet this idea has received little empirical support. Using computational analyses of behaviour and multivariate decoding of electroencephalographic activity, we test the hypothesis that perceived vulnerability to extrinsic morbidity risks impacts susceptibility to social influence, and investigate whether and how this covariation is reflected in the brain. Data collected from 261 participants tested online revealed that perceived vulnerability to extrinsic morbidity risks is positively associated with susceptibility to follow peers' opinion in the context of a standard face evaluation task. We found similar results on 17 participants tested in the laboratory, and showed that the sensitivity of EEG signals to public information correlates with the participants' degree of vulnerability. We further demonstrated that the combination of perceived vulnerability to extrinsic morbidity with decoding sensitivities better predicted social influence scores than each variable taken in isolation. These findings suggest that susceptibility to social influence is partly calibrated by perceived environmental risks, possibly via a tuning of neural mechanisms involved in the processing of public information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pierre O Jacquet
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives (LNC), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, INSERM U960, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, F-75005, Paris, France.
- Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'Etudes Cognitives, CNRS UMR8129, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, F-75005, Paris, France.
- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75006, Paris, France.
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8242, 75006, Paris, France.
| | - Valentin Wyart
- Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives (LNC), Département d'Etudes Cognitives, INSERM U960, Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, F-75005, Paris, France
| | - Andrea Desantis
- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75006, Paris, France
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8242, 75006, Paris, France
- Département Traitement de l'Information et Systèmes, ONERA, Salon-de-Provence, France
| | - Yi-Fang Hsu
- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75006, Paris, France
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8242, 75006, Paris, France
- Department of Educational Psychology and Counselling, National Taiwan Normal University, 10610, Taipei, Taiwan
| | - Lionel Granjon
- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75006, Paris, France
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8242, 75006, Paris, France
| | - Claire Sergent
- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75006, Paris, France
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8242, 75006, Paris, France
| | - Florian Waszak
- Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 75006, Paris, France
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, UMR 8242, 75006, Paris, France
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26
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Abstract
Research suggests that people can accurately predict the political affiliations of others using only information extracted from the face. It is less clear from this research, however, what particular facial physiological processes or features communicate such information. Using a model of emotion developed in psychology that treats emotional expressivity as an individual-level trait, this article provides a theoretical account of why emotional expressivity may provide reliable signals of political orientation, and it tests the theory in four empirical studies. We find statistically significant liberal/conservative differences in self-reported emotional expressivity, in facial emotional expressivity measured physiologically, in the perceived emotional expressivity and ideology of political elites, and in an experiment that finds that more emotionally expressive faces are perceived as more liberal.
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27
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Hale J, Payne MEM, Taylor KM, Paoletti D, De C Hamilton AF. The virtual maze: A behavioural tool for measuring trust. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2018; 71:989-1008. [DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1307865] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
Trusting another person may depend on our level of generalised trust in others, as well as perceptions of that specific person’s trustworthiness. However, many studies measuring trust outcomes have not discussed generalised versus specific trust. To measure specific trust in others, we developed a novel behavioural task. Participants navigate a virtual maze and make a series of decisions about how to proceed. Before each decision, they may ask for advice from two virtual characters they have briefly interviewed earlier. We manipulated the virtual characters’ trustworthiness during the interview phase and measured how often participants approached and followed advice from each character. We also measured trust through ratings and an investment game. Across three studies, we found participants followed advice from a trustworthy character significantly more than an untrustworthy character, demonstrating the validity of the maze task. Behaviour in the virtual maze reflected specific trust rather than generalised trust, whereas the investment game picked up on generalised trust as well as specific trust. Our data suggest the virtual maze task may provide an alternative behavioural approach to measuring specific trust in future research, and we demonstrate how the task may be used in traditional laboratories.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joanna Hale
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
| | - Madeleine EM Payne
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
| | - Kathryn M Taylor
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
| | - Davide Paoletti
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
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28
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Abstract
A longstanding controversy concerns the functional organization of high-level vision, and the extent to which the recognition of different classes of visual stimuli engages a single system or multiple independent systems. We examine this in the context of congenital prosopagnosia (CP), a neurodevelopmental disorder in which individuals, without a history of brain damage, are impaired at face recognition. This paper reviews all CP cases from 1976 to 2016, and explores the evidence for the association or dissociation of face and object recognition. Of the 238 CP cases with data permitting a satisfactory evaluation, 80.3% evinced an association between impaired face and object recognition whereas 19.7% evinced a dissociation. We evaluate the strength of the evidence and correlate the face and object recognition behaviour. We consider the implications for theories of functional organization of the visual system, and offer suggestions for further adjudication of the relationship between face and object recognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jacob Geskin
- a Department of Psychology and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition , Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh , PA , USA
| | - Marlene Behrmann
- a Department of Psychology and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition , Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh , PA , USA
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29
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Young LR, Yu W, Holloway M, Rodgers BN, Chapman SB, Krawczyk DC. Amygdala activation as a marker for selective attention toward neutral faces in a chronic traumatic brain injury population. Neuropsychologia 2017; 104:214-222. [PMID: 28844425 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.08.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/24/2016] [Revised: 08/18/2017] [Accepted: 08/23/2017] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
There has been great interest in characterizing the response of the amygdala to emotional faces, especially in the context of social cognition. Although amygdala activation is most often associated with fearful or angry stimuli, there is considerable evidence that the response of the amygdala to neutral faces is both robust and reliable. This characteristic of amygdala function is of particular interest in the context of assessing populations with executive function deficits, such as traumatic brain injuries, which can be evaluated using fMRI attention modulation tasks that evaluate prefrontal control over representations, notably faces. The current study tested the hypothesis that the amygdala may serve as a marker of selective attention to neutral faces. Using fMRI, we gathered data within a chronic traumatic brain injury population. Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signal change within the left and right amygdalae and fusiform face areas was measured while participants viewed neutral faces and scenes, under conditions requiring participants to (1) categorize pictures of faces and scenes, (2) selectively attend to either faces or scenes, or (3) attend to both faces and scenes. Findings revealed that the amygdala is an effective marker for selective attention to neutral faces and, furthermore, it was more face-specific than the fusiform face area.
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Affiliation(s)
- Leanne R Young
- University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health, 2200 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75235, United States.
| | - Weikei Yu
- University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health, 2200 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75235, United States.
| | - Michael Holloway
- University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health, 2200 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75235, United States.
| | - Barry N Rodgers
- University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health, 2200 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75235, United States.
| | - Sandra B Chapman
- University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health, 2200 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75235, United States.
| | - Daniel C Krawczyk
- University of Texas at Dallas Center for Brain Health, 2200 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, TX 75235, United States.
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Okubo M, Ishikawa K, Kobayashi A. The cheek of a cheater: Effects of posing the left and right hemiface on the perception of trustworthiness. Laterality 2017; 23:209-227. [PMID: 28707557 DOI: 10.1080/1357650x.2017.1351449] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/19/2022]
Abstract
Our cognitive mechanisms are designed to detect cheaters in social exchanges. However, cheater detection can be thwarted by a posed smile, which cheaters display with greater emotional intensity than cooperators. The present study investigated the role of hemifacial asymmetries in the perception of trustworthiness using face photographs with left and right cheek poses. Participants (N = 170) observed face photographs of cheaters and cooperators in an economic game. In the photographs, models expressed happiness or anger and turned slightly to the left or right to show their left or right cheeks to the camera. When the models expressed anger on their faces, cheaters showing the right cheek were rated as less trustworthy than cooperators (irrespective of cheeks shown) and cheaters showing the left cheek. When the models expressed happiness, trustworthiness ratings increased and did not differ between cheaters and cooperators, and no substantial asymmetries were observed. These patterns were replicated even when the face photographs were mirror-reversed. These results suggest that a cheater's fake smile conceals an uncooperative attitude that is displayed in the right hemiface, ultimately disguising cheater detection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matia Okubo
- a Department of Psychology , Senshu University , Kawasaki , Japan
| | - Kenta Ishikawa
- a Department of Psychology , Senshu University , Kawasaki , Japan
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31
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Adams RB, Albohn DN, Kveraga K. Social Vision: Applying a Social-Functional Approach to Face and Expression Perception. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2017; 26:243-248. [PMID: 29606807 DOI: 10.1177/0963721417706392] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
A social-functional approach to face processing comes with a number of assumptions. First, given that humans possess limited cognitive resources, it assumes that we naturally allocate attention to processing and integrating the most adaptively relevant social cues. Second, from these cues, we make behavioral forecasts about others in order to respond in an efficient and adaptive manner. This assumption aligns with broader ecological accounts of vision that highlight a direct action-perception link, even for nonsocial vision. Third, humans are naturally predisposed to process faces in this functionally adaptive manner. This latter contention is implied by our attraction to dynamic aspects of the face, including looking behavior and facial expressions, from which we tend to overgeneralize inferences, even when forming impressions of stable traits. The functional approach helps to address how and why observers are able to integrate functionally related compound social cues in a manner that is ecologically relevant and thus adaptive.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Kestutis Kveraga
- Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
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32
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Mattarozzi K, Colonnello V, De Gioia F, Todorov A. I care, even after the first impression: Facial appearance-based evaluations in healthcare context. Soc Sci Med 2017; 182:68-72. [DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.04.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/10/2016] [Revised: 03/28/2017] [Accepted: 04/07/2017] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
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Towler J, Fisher K, Eimer M. The Cognitive and Neural Basis of Developmental Prosopagnosia. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2017; 70:316-344. [DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2016.1165263] [Citation(s) in RCA: 26] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Abstract
Developmental prosopagnosia (DP) is a severe impairment of visual face recognition in the absence of any apparent brain damage. The factors responsible for DP have not yet been fully identified. This article provides a selective review of recent studies investigating cognitive and neural processes that may contribute to the face recognition deficits in DP, focusing primarily on event-related brain potential (ERP) measures of face perception and recognition. Studies that measured the face-sensitive N170 component as a marker of perceptual face processing have shown that the perceptual discrimination between faces and non-face objects is intact in DP. Other N170 studies suggest that faces are not represented in the typical fashion in DP. Individuals with DP appear to have specific difficulties in processing spatial and contrast deviations from canonical upright visual–perceptual face templates. The rapid detection of emotional facial expressions appears to be unaffected in DP. ERP studies of the activation of visual memory for individual faces and of the explicit identification of particular individuals have revealed differences between DPs and controls in the timing of these processes and in the links between visual face memory and explicit face recognition. These observations suggest that the speed and efficiency of information propagation through the cortical face network is altered in DP. The nature of the perceptual impairments in DP suggests that atypical visual experience with the eye region of faces over development may be an important contributing factor to DP.
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Affiliation(s)
- John Towler
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK
| | - Katie Fisher
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK
| | - Martin Eimer
- Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK
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34
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Dalrymple KA, Elison JT, Duchaine B. Face-specific and domain-general visual processing deficits in children with developmental prosopagnosia. Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2017; 70:259-275. [PMID: 27144387 PMCID: PMC7439757 DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2015.1122642] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Evidence suggests that face and object recognition depend on distinct neural circuitry within the visual system. Work with adults with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) demonstrates that some individuals have preserved object recognition despite severe face recognition deficits. This face selectivity in adults with DP indicates that face- and object-processing systems can develop independently, but it is unclear at what point in development these mechanisms are separable. Determining when individuals with DP first show dissociations between faces and objects is one means to address this question. In the current study, we investigated face and object processing in six children with DP (5-12-years-old). Each child was assessed with one face perception test, two different face memory tests, and two object memory tests that were matched to the face memory tests in format and difficulty. Scores from the DP children on the matched face and object tasks were compared to within-subject data from age-matched controls. Four of the six DP children, including the 5-year-old, showed evidence of face-specific deficits, while one child appeared to have more general visual-processing deficits. The remaining child had inconsistent results. The presence of face-specific deficits in children with DP suggests that face and object perception depend on dissociable processes in childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kirsten A. Dalrymple
- Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
| | - Jed T. Elison
- Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
| | - Brad Duchaine
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
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35
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Can I Trust You? Laterality of Facial Trustworthiness in an Economic Game. JOURNAL OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 2016. [DOI: 10.1007/s10919-016-0242-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
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36
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Biotti F, Cook R. Impaired perception of facial emotion in developmental prosopagnosia. Cortex 2016; 81:126-36. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2016.04.008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 44] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/18/2015] [Revised: 03/03/2016] [Accepted: 04/08/2016] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
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37
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Power Eliminates the Influence of Body Posture on Facial Emotion Recognition. JOURNAL OF NONVERBAL BEHAVIOR 2016. [DOI: 10.1007/s10919-016-0233-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
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38
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Reilly MJ, Tomsic JA, Fernandez SJ, Davison SP. Effect of facial rejuvenation surgery on perceived attractiveness, femininity, and personality. JAMA FACIAL PLAST SU 2016; 17:202-7. [PMID: 25856281 DOI: 10.1001/jamafacial.2015.0158] [Citation(s) in RCA: 62] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/14/2022]
Abstract
IMPORTANCE To date, the conversation about facial rejuvenation surgery has focused on one goal: youthfulness. However, human beings are judged throughout life based on many other characteristics and personal qualities conveyed by their faces. The term facial profiling has been used to describe this act of determining personality attributes through visual observation. OBJECTIVES To introduce the concept of facial profiling to the surgical literature and to evaluate and quantify the changes in personality perception that occur with facial rejuvenation surgery. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This study was a retrospective evaluation of preoperative and postoperative photographs of 30 white female patients who underwent facial rejuvenation surgery between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2013. Procedures included rhytidectomy (face-lift), upper blepharoplasty, lower blepharoplasty, eyebrow-lift, neck-lift, and/or chin implant. The 60 photographs (30 preoperative and 30 postoperative) of these patients were split into 6 groups, each with 5 preoperative and 5 postoperative photographs. The same patient's preoperative and postoperative photographs were not included in any single group to avoid any recall bias. At least 24 individuals rated each photograph for 6 personality traits (aggressiveness, extroversion, likeability, trustworthiness, risk seeking, and social skills), as well as for attractiveness and femininity. The raters were blinded as to the intent of the study. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Ratings of personality traits, attractiveness, and femininity. RESULTS Of the 8 traits that were evaluated, analysis revealed 4 traits with statistically significant improvements when comparing preoperative and postoperative scores: likeability (+0.36, P < .01), social skills (+0.38, P = .01), attractiveness (+0.36, P = .01), and femininity (+0.39, P = .02). Improvement in scores for perceived trustworthiness (+0.22, P = .06), aggressiveness (-0.14, P = .32), extroversion (+0.19, P = .14), and risk seeking (+0.10, P = .27) did not demonstrate statistically significant changes. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE Facial plastic surgery changes the perception of patients by those around them. Traditionally, these interventions have focused on improvements in youthful appearance, but this study illuminates the other dimensions of a patient's facial profile that are influenced by facial rejuvenation surgery. The data in this sample population demonstrate an increase in the perception of likeability, social skills, attractiveness, and femininity. To our knowledge, this is the first study in the surgical literature to evaluate these broader outcome measures after facial rejuvenation surgery. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE NA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael J Reilly
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC2Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC
| | - Jaclyn A Tomsic
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC3Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Mercy Medical Center, St Louis, Missouri
| | | | - Steven P Davison
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC
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39
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Caulfield F, Ewing L, Bank S, Rhodes G. Judging trustworthiness from faces: Emotion cues modulate trustworthiness judgments in young children. Br J Psychol 2015; 107:503-18. [PMID: 26493772 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12156] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/17/2015] [Revised: 09/14/2015] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
By adulthood, people judge trustworthiness from appearances rapidly and reliably. However, we know little about these judgments in children. This novel study investigates the developmental trajectory of explicit trust judgments from faces, and the contribution made by emotion cues across age groups. Five-, 7-, 10-year-olds, and adults rated the trustworthiness of trustworthy and untrustworthy faces with neutral expressions. The same participants also rated faces displaying overt happy and angry expressions, allowing us to investigate whether emotion cues modulate trustworthiness judgments similarly in children and adults. Results revealed that the ability to evaluate the trustworthiness of faces emerges in childhood, but may not be adult like until 10 years of age. Moreover, we show that emotion cues modulate trust judgments in young children, as well as adults. Anger cues diminished the appearance of trustworthiness for participants from 5 years of age and happy cues increased it, although this effect did not consistently emerge until later in childhood, that is, 10 years of age. These associations also extended to more subtle emotion cues present in neutral faces. Our results indicate that young children are sensitive to facial trustworthiness, and suggest that similar expression cues modulate these judgments in children and adults.
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Affiliation(s)
- Frances Caulfield
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
| | - Louise Ewing
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia.,Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, UK
| | - Samantha Bank
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
| | - Gillian Rhodes
- ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia, Australia
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40
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Civile C, Obhi SS. Towards a Mechanistic Understanding of the Effects of Body Posture on Facial Emotion Categorization. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 2015; 128:367-77. [PMID: 26442343 DOI: 10.5406/amerjpsyc.128.3.0367] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/06/2022]
Abstract
This study investigated the causes of the face-body congruence effect (FBCE), which refers to the advantage in performance when participants are asked to categorize emotional faces compounded with emotional matching body postures (congruent) compared with incongruent face-body compound stimuli (body postures mismatching the facial emotions). Experiment 1 showed that manipulations aiming to alter holistic processing significantly reduced the FBCE. In particular, the disruption of holistic processing affected significantly the performance for congruent composites. However, no effect was obtained on the incongruent stimuli. In Experiment 2, the inversion manipulation showed a clear disadvantage for incongruent stimuli brought by the disruption of the single feature orientation information. Thus, we found confirmation of the different processing involved in perceiving congruent and incongruent stimuli. Finally, Experiment 3 confirmed that we are able to reduce entirely the FBCE when the orientation of the units (the face and the body) constituting the incongruent composites is matched.
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41
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Okubo M, Ishikawa K, Kobayashi A, Laeng B, Tommasi L. Cool Guys and Warm Husbands : The Effect of Smiling on Male Facial Attractiveness for Short- and Long-Term Relationships. EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY 2015; 13:1474704915600567. [PMID: 37924180 PMCID: PMC10481086 DOI: 10.1177/1474704915600567] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/31/2014] [Accepted: 07/14/2015] [Indexed: 11/06/2023] Open
Abstract
While smiling enhances women's facial attractiveness, the findings are inconclusive for men. The present study investigated the effect of smiling on male facial attractiveness for short- and long-term prospective partners using East Asian and European samples. In Experiment 1 (N = 218), where female participants rated male facial attractiveness, the facilitative effect of smiling was present when judging long-term partners but absent for short-term partners. This pattern was observed for East Asians as well as for Europeans. Experiment 2 (N = 71) demonstrated that smiling male faces engendered an impression suitable for long-term partnership (e.g., high ratings of trustworthiness) while neutral faces produced an impression suitable for short-term partnership (e.g., high ratings of masculinity). We discuss these results in terms of opposing evolutionary strategies in mate choice: heritable benefit versus paternal investment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matia Okubo
- Department of Psychology, Senshu University, Kanagawa, Japan
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42
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43
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Shah P, Gaule A, Sowden S, Bird G, Cook R. The 20-item prosopagnosia index (PI20): a self-report instrument for identifying developmental prosopagnosia. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2015; 2:140343. [PMID: 26543567 PMCID: PMC4632531 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.140343] [Citation(s) in RCA: 100] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2014] [Accepted: 05/26/2015] [Indexed: 05/11/2023]
Abstract
Self-report plays a key role in the identification of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), providing complementary evidence to computer-based tests of face recognition ability, aiding interpretation of scores. However, the lack of standardized self-report instruments has contributed to heterogeneous reporting standards for self-report evidence in DP research. The lack of standardization prevents comparison across samples and limits investigation of the relationship between objective tests of face processing and self-report measures. To address these issues, this paper introduces the PI20; a 20-item self-report measure for quantifying prosopagnosic traits. The new instrument successfully distinguishes suspected prosopagnosics from typically developed adults. Strong correlations were also observed between PI20 scores and performance on objective tests of familiar and unfamiliar face recognition ability, confirming that people have the necessary insight into their own face recognition ability required by a self-report instrument. Importantly, PI20 scores did not correlate with recognition of non-face objects, indicating that the instrument measures face recognition, and not a general perceptual impairment. These results suggest that the PI20 can play a valuable role in identifying DP. A freely available self-report instrument will permit more effective description of self-report diagnostic evidence, thereby facilitating greater comparison of prosopagnosic samples, and more reliable classification.
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Affiliation(s)
- Punit Shah
- Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre (MRC), Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, University of London, London, UK
- Department of Psychology, City University London, London, UK
| | - Anne Gaule
- Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, Bedford Way, London, UK
| | - Sophie Sowden
- Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre (MRC), Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, University of London, London, UK
| | - Geoffrey Bird
- Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre (MRC), Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, University of London, London, UK
- Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK
| | - Richard Cook
- Department of Psychology, City University London, London, UK
- Author for correspondence: Richard Cook e-mail:
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44
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Brewer R, Collins F, Cook R, Bird G. Atypical trait inferences from facial cues in alexithymia. ACTA ACUST UNITED AC 2015; 15:637-43. [PMID: 25867918 PMCID: PMC4768128 DOI: 10.1037/emo0000066] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
Abstract
It is often difficult to distinguish strangers’ permanent facial shapes from their transient facial expressions, for example, whether they are scowling or have narrow-set eyes. Overinterpretation of ambiguous cues may contribute to the rapid character judgments we make about others. Someone with narrow eyes might be judged untrustworthy, because of strong associations between facial anger and threat. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the trait judgments made by individuals with severe alexithymia, associated with impaired recognition of facial emotion. Consistent with the hypothesis, alexithymic participants demonstrated reduced interrater consistency when judging the character traits of unfamiliar faces, and the presence of subtle emotions. Nevertheless, where alexithymics perceived, or misperceived, emotion cues, the character traits inferred thereafter were broadly typical. The finding that individuals with developmental deficits of emotion recognition exhibit atypical attribution of character traits, confirms the hypothesis that emotion-recognition mechanisms play a causal role in character judgments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rebecca Brewer
- MRC Social, Genetic, & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London
| | | | - Richard Cook
- Department of Psychology, City University London
| | - Geoffrey Bird
- MRC Social, Genetic, & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London
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45
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Todorov A, Olivola CY, Dotsch R, Mende-Siedlecki P. Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance. Annu Rev Psychol 2014; 66:519-45. [PMID: 25196277 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143831] [Citation(s) in RCA: 432] [Impact Index Per Article: 43.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
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.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexander Todorov
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08540;
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46
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Duke D, Fiacconi CM, Köhler S. Parallel effects of processing fluency and positive affect on familiarity-based recognition decisions for faces. Front Psychol 2014; 5:328. [PMID: 24795678 PMCID: PMC4001004 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00328] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/04/2013] [Accepted: 03/29/2014] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
According to attribution models of familiarity assessment, people can use a heuristic in recognition-memory decisions, in which they attribute the subjective ease of processing of a memory probe to a prior encounter with the stimulus in question. Research in social cognition suggests that experienced positive affect may be the proximal cue that signals fluency in various experimental contexts. In the present study, we compared the effects of positive affect and fluency on recognition-memory judgments for faces with neutral emotional expression. We predicted that if positive affect is indeed the critical cue that signals processing fluency at retrieval, then its manipulation should produce effects that closely mirror those produced by manipulations of processing fluency. In two experiments, we employed a masked-priming procedure in combination with a Remember-Know (RK) paradigm that aimed to separate familiarity- from recollection-based memory decisions. In addition, participants performed a prime-discrimination task that allowed us to take inter-individual differences in prime awareness into account. We found highly similar effects of our priming manipulations of processing fluency and of positive affect. In both cases, the critical effect was specific to familiarity-based recognition responses. Moreover, in both experiments it was reflected in a shift toward a more liberal response bias, rather than in changed discrimination. Finally, in both experiments, the effect was found to be related to prime awareness; it was present only in participants who reported a lack of such awareness on the prime-discrimination task. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that points not only to a role of fluency, but also of positive affect in familiarity assessment. As such they are consistent with the idea that fluency itself may be hedonically marked.
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Affiliation(s)
- Devin Duke
- Department of Psychology, Brain and Mind Institute, Western University London, ON, Canada
| | - Chris M Fiacconi
- Department of Psychology, Brain and Mind Institute, Western University London, ON, Canada
| | - Stefan Köhler
- Department of Psychology, Brain and Mind Institute, Western University London, ON, Canada
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47
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Rezlescu C, Susilo T, Barton JJ, Duchaine B. Normal social evaluations of faces in acquired prosopagnosia. Cortex 2014; 50:200-3. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2013.07.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2013] [Revised: 07/05/2013] [Accepted: 07/31/2013] [Indexed: 11/24/2022]
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48
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Do You Trust My Avatar? Effects of Photo-Realistic Seller Avatars and Reputation Scores on Trust in Online Transactions. LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE 2014. [DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-07293-7_45] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
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49
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Okubo M, Ishikawa K, Kobayashi A. No trust on the left side: hemifacial asymmetries for trustworthiness and emotional expressions. Brain Cogn 2013; 82:181-6. [PMID: 23673250 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2013.04.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 20] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2012] [Revised: 04/12/2013] [Accepted: 04/13/2013] [Indexed: 11/26/2022]
Abstract
People can discriminate cheaters from cooperators by their appearance. However, successful cheater detection can be thwarted by a posed smile, which cheaters display with greater emotional intensity than cooperators. The present study investigated the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms of a posed smile, which cheaters use to conceal their anti-social attitude, in terms of hemifacial asymmetries of emotional expressions. Raters (50 women and 50 men) performed trustworthiness judgments on composite faces of cheaters and cooperators, operationally defined by the number of deceptions in an economic game. The left-left composites of cheaters were judged to be more trustworthy than the right-right composites when the models posed a happy expression. This left-hemiface advantage for the happy expression was not observed for cooperators. In addition, the left-hemiface advantage of cheaters disappeared for the angry expression. These results suggest that cheaters used the left hemiface, which is connected to the emotional side of the brain (i.e., the right hemisphere), more effectively than the right hemiface to conceal their anti-social attitude.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matia Okubo
- Department of Psychology, Senshu University, Japan.
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50
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Bate S, Cook SJ, Mole J, Cole J. First report of generalized face processing difficulties in möbius sequence. PLoS One 2013; 8:e62656. [PMID: 23638131 PMCID: PMC3634771 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0062656] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2012] [Accepted: 03/22/2013] [Indexed: 11/22/2022] Open
Abstract
Reverse simulation models of facial expression recognition suggest that we recognize the emotions of others by running implicit motor programmes responsible for the production of that expression. Previous work has tested this theory by examining facial expression recognition in participants with Möbius sequence, a condition characterized by congenital bilateral facial paralysis. However, a mixed pattern of findings has emerged, and it has not yet been tested whether these individuals can imagine facial expressions, a process also hypothesized to be underpinned by proprioceptive feedback from the face. We investigated this issue by examining expression recognition and imagery in six participants with Möbius sequence, and also carried out tests assessing facial identity and object recognition, as well as basic visual processing. While five of the six participants presented with expression recognition impairments, only one was impaired at the imagery of facial expressions. Further, five participants presented with other difficulties in the recognition of facial identity or objects, or in lower-level visual processing. We discuss the implications of our findings for the reverse simulation model, and suggest that facial identity recognition impairments may be more severe in the condition than has previously been noted.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah Bate
- Psychology Research Centre, Bournemouth University, Poole, United Kingdom.
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