바로가기메뉴

본문 바로가기 주메뉴 바로가기

Korean Journal of Psychology: General

What Does the Face Tell Us in Social Interactions? A Review of Inferences and Judgments Based on Facial Appearance

Korean Journal of Psychology: General / Korean Journal of Psychology: General, (P)1229-067X; (E)2734-1127
2020, v.39 no.1, pp.141-173
https://doi.org/10.22257/kjp.2020.3.39.1.141


Abstract

Despite the fact that we are told not to judge people by their appearances, when meeting someone for the first time, we automatically pay attention to their face. People’s interest in faces and the popularity of physiognomy have continued to the present day since ancient Greece, and many still believe they can make relatively accurate inferences about social and personal characteristics of others from facial appearances. In line with this strong interest, our face-based judgments have received extensive attention from researchers with diverse perspectives. However, they have received relatively little research attention in Korea. The goals of this article are to review the literature on face perception and impression formation and also, to suggest directions for future research. First, we introduce previous research on the way people make inferences from faces and the real world consequences of such inferences based on faces. Next, we review research on the accuracy of face-based inferences and further discuss when and how facial information leads observers to make wrong decisions and judgments. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.

keywords
얼굴 지각, 인상 형성, 문화, 사회 인지, Face Perception, Impression Formation, Culture, Social Cognition

Reference

1.

나진경, 허 진 (2016). 얼굴에서 유추할 수 있는 유능함과 사회적 관계가 한국 선거 결과에 미치는 영향. 한국심리학회지: 사회및 성격, 30(4), 37-49.

2.

Albright, L., Kenny, D. A., & Malloy, T. E. (1988). Consensus in personality judgments at zero acquaintance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55(3), 387-395.

3.

Ames, D., Kammrath, L., Suppes, A., & Bolger, N. (2010). Not so fast: The (not-quitecomplete)dissociation between accuracy and confidence in thin-slice impressions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(2), 264-277.

4.

Anderl, C., Hahn, T., Schmidt, A. K., Moldenhauer, H., Notebaert, K., Clement, C. C., & Windmann, S. (2016). Facial width-to-height ratio predicts psychopathic traits in males. Personality and Individual Differences, 88, 99-101.

5.

Antonakis, J., & Dalgas, O. (2009). Predicting elections: Child’s play! Science, 323(5918), 1183.

6.

Aristotle. (1936). Physiognomics. In T. E. Page, E. Capps, W. H. D. Rouse, A. Post, & E. H. Warmington (Eds.), Minor Works (1955th ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

7.

Ballew, C. C., & Todorov, A. (2007). Predicting political elections from rapid and unreflective face judgments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(46), 17948-17953.

8.

Berry, D. S., & Brownlow, S. (1989). Were the physiognomists right? Personality correlates of facial babyishness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15(2), 266-279.

9.

Berry, D. S., & Zebrowitz-McArthur, L. A. (1988). What’s in a face? Facial maturity and the attribution of legal responsibility. Personality &Social Psychology Bulletin, 14(1), 23-33.

10.

Bertrand, M., Karlan, D., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zinman, J. (2010). What’s advertising content worth? Evidence from a consumer credit marketing field experiment. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(1), 263-306.

11.

Bjornsdottir, R. T., & Rule, N. O. (2017). The visibility of social class from facial cues. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(4), 530-546.

12.

Blair, I. V., Chapleau, K. M., & Judd, C. M. (2005). The use of Afrocentric features as cues for judgment in the presence of diagnostic information. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35(1), 59-68.

13.

Blair, I. V., Judd, C. M., & Chapleau, K. M. (2004). The influence of Afrocentric facial features in criminal sentencing. Psychological Science, 15(10), 674-679.

14.

Bond, C., Berry, D., & Omar, A. (1994). The kernel of truth in judgments of deceptiveness. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 15(4), 523-534.

15.

Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A. (1992). Trait inferences: Sources of validity at zero acquaintance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(4), 645-657.

16.

Burton, A. M., & Jenkins, R. (2011). Unfamiliar face perception. In A. Calder, J. V. Haxby, M. Johnson, & G. Rhodes (Eds.), Handbook of face perception (pp. 287-306). New York, NY:Oxford University Press.

17.

Byrne, R. W., & Corp, N. (2004). Neocortex size predicts deception rate in primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 271(1549), 1693-1699.

18.

Carpinella, C. M., & Johnson, K. L. (2013). Appearance-based politics: Sex-typed facial cues communicate political party affiliation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(1), 156-160.

19.

Carre, J. M., & McCormick, C. M. (2008). In your face: Facial metrics predict aggressive behaviour in the laboratory and in varsity and professional hockey players. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 275(1651), 2651-2656.

20.

Carre, J. M., McCormick, C. M., & Mondloch, C. J. (2009). Facial structure is a reliable cue of aggressive behavior. Psychological Science, 20(10), 1194-1198.

21.

Castelli, L., Carraro, L., Ghitti, C., & Pastore, M. (2009). The effects of perceived competence and sociability on electoral outcomes. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(5), 1152-1155.

22.

Chen, F. F., Jing, Y., & Lee, J. M. (2014). The looks of a leader: Competent and trustworthy, but not dominant. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 51, 27-33.

23.

Chen, F. F., Jing, Y., Lee, J. M., & Bai, L. (2016). Culture matters: The looks of a leader are not all the same. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(6), 570-578.

24.

Cogsdill, E. J., Todorov, A., Spelke, E. S., &Banaji, M. R. (2014). Inferring character from faces: A developmental study. Psychological Science, 25(5), 1132-1139.

25.

Collins, A. F. (1999). The enduring appeal of physiognomy: Physical appearance as a sign of temperament, character, and intelligence. History of Psychology, 2(4), 251-276.

26.

Dawkins, R., & Krebs, J. R. (1979). Arms races between and within species. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 205(1161), 489-511.

27.

Duarte, J., Siegel, S., & Young, L. (2012). Trust and credit: The role of appearance in peer-to-peer lending. Review of Financial Studies, 25(8), 2455-2484.

28.

Dumas, R., & Teste´, B. (2006). The influence of criminal facial stereotypes on juridic judgments. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 65(4), 237-244.

29.

Eberhardt, J. L., Davies, P. G., Purdie-Vaughns, V. J., & Johnson, S. L. (2006). Looking deathworthy: Perceived stereotypicality of black defendants predicts capital-sentencing outcomes. Psychological Science, 17(5), 383-386.

30.

Ellis, H. (1895). The Criminal. London: Walter Scott.

31.

Ewing, L., Caulfield, F., Read, A., & Rhodes, G. (2015). Perceived trustworthiness of faces drives trust behaviour in children. Developmental Science, 18(2), 327-334.

32.

Flowe, H. D., & Humphries, J. E. (2011). An examination of criminal face bias in a random sample of police lineups. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(2), 265-273.

33.

Folstad, I., & Karter, A. J. (1992). Parasites, bright males, and the immunocompetence handicap. The American Naturalist, 139(3), 603-622.

34.

Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: Social virtues and the creation of prosperity. New York: Free Press.

35.

Funder, D. C. (1987). Errors and mistakes:Evaluating the accuracy of social judgment. Psychological Bulletin, 101(1), 75-90.

36.

Geniole, S. N., Denson, T. F., Dixson, B. J., Carre, J. M., & McCormick, C. M. (2015). Evidence from meta-analyses of the facial width-to-height ratio as an evolved cue of threat. PLoS ONE, 10(7), e0132726.

37.

Geniole, S. N., Keyes, A. E., Carre, J. M., &McCormick, C. M. (2014). Fearless dominance mediates the relationship between the facial width-to-height ratio and willingness to cheat. Personality and Individual Differences, 57, 59-64.

38.

Goetz, S. M., Shattuck, K. S., Miller, R. M., Campbell, J. A., Lozoya, E., Weisfeld, G. E., & Carre, J. M. (2013). Social status moderates the relationship between facial structure and aggression. Psychological Science, 24(11), 2329-2334.

39.

Goren, C. C., Sarty, M., & Wu, P. Y. (1975). Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants. Pediatrics, 56(4), 544-549.

40.

Graham, J. R., Harvey, C. R., & Puri, M. (2017). A corporate beauty contest. Management Science, 63(9), 3044-3056.

41.

Haselhuhn, M. P., & Wong, E. M. (2012). Bad to the bone: Facial structure predicts unethical behaviour. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 279(1728), 571-576.

42.

Haselhuhn, M. P., Wong, E. M., & Ormiston, M. E. (2013). Self-fulfilling prophecies as a link between men’s facial width-to-height ratio and behavior. PLoS ONE, 8(8), e72259.

43.

Hassin, R., & Trope, Y. (2000). Facing faces:Studies on the cognitive aspects of physiognomy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 837-852.

44.

Heine, S. J., Lehman, D. R., Markus, H. R., &Kitayama, S. (1999). Is there a universal need for positive self-regard? Psychological Review, 106(4), 766-794.

45.

Imada, T., & Kitayama, S. (2010). Social eyes and choice justification: Culture and dissonance revisited. Social Cognition, 28(5), 589-608.

46.

Jack, R. E., Caldara, R., & Schyns, P. G. (2012). Internal representations reveal cultural diversity in expectations of facial expressions of emotion. Journal of Experimental Psychology:General, 141(1), 19-25.

47.

Jahoda, G. (1954). Political attitudes and judgments of other people. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49(3), 330-334.

48.

Jenkins, R., White, D., Van Montfort, X., &Burton, A. M. (2011). Variability in photos of the same face. Cognition, 121(3), 313-323.

49.

Johnson, M. H., Dziurawiec, S., Ellis, H., &Morton, J. (1991). Newborns’ preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline. Cognition, 40(1-2), 1-19.

50.

Jussim, L. (1986). Self-fulfilling prophecies: A theoretical and integrative review. Psychological Review, 93(4), 429-445.

51.

Kosinski, M. (2017). Facial width-to-height ratio does not predict self-reported behavioral tendencies. Psychological Science, 28(11), 1675-1682.

52.

Kosinski, M., Stillwell, D. J., & Graepel, T. (2013). Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(15), 5802-5805.

53.

Laird, D. A. (1927). The Psychology of Selecting Men. New York: McGraw-Hill.

54.

Lavater, J. C. (1775). Essays on Physiognomy:Designed to promote the knowledge and the love of mankind. London: William Tegg and Co.

55.

Lenz, G. S., & Lawson, C. (2011). Looking the part: Television leads less informed citizens to vote based on candidates’ appearance. American Journal of Political Science, 55(3), 574-589.

56.

Lichtenberg, G. C. (1968). Schriften und Briefe. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag.

57.

Lin, C., Adolphs, R., & Alvarez, R. M. (2018). Inferring whether officials are corruptible from looking at their faces. Psychological Science, 29(11), 1807-1823.

58.

Little, A. C., Burriss, R. P., Jones, B. C., &Roberts, S. C. (2007). Facial appearance affects voting decisions. Evolution and Human Behavior, 28(1), 18-27.

59.

Little, A., & Perrett, D. (2007). Using composite images to assess accuracy in personality attribution to faces. British Journal of Psychology, 98(1), 111-126.

60.

Macrae, C. N., & Shepherd, J. (1989). Do criminal stereotypes mediate juridic judgments? British Journal of Social Psychology, 28(2), 189-191.

61.

Madera, J. M., & Hebl, M. R. (2012). Discrimination against facially stigmatized applicants in interviews: An eye-tracking and face-to-face investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(2), 317-330.

62.

Malpass, R. S., & Kravitz, J. (1969). Recognition for faces of own and other race. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 13(4), 330-334.

63.

Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224-253.

64.

Mazur, A., Mazur, J., & Keating, C. (1984). Military rank attainment of a West Point class: Effects of cadets’ physical features. American Journal of Sociology, 90(1), 125-150.

65.

Meissner, C. A., & Brigham, J. C. (2001). Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 7(1), 3-35.

66.

Mueller, U., & Mazur, A. (1996). Facial dominance of West Point cadets as a predictor of later military rank. Social Forces, 74(3), 823-850.

67.

Na, J., Kim, S., Oh, H., Choi, I., & O’Toole, A. (2015). Competence judgments based on facial appearance are better predictors of American elections than of Korean elections. Psychological Science, 26(7), 1107-1113.

68.

Na, J., & Kitayama, S. (2012). Will people work hard on a task they choose? Social-eyes priming in different cultural contexts. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(1), 284-290.

69.

Nelson, L. D., Simmons, J., & Simonsohn, U. (2018). Psychology’s renaissance. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 511-534.

70.

Nisbett, R. E., Peng, K., Choi, I., & Norenzayan, A. (2001). Culture and systems of thought:Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review, 108(2), 291-310.

71.

Oh, D., Buck, E. A., & Todorov, A. (2019). Revealing hidden gender biases in competence impressions of faces, Psychological Science, 30(1), 65-79.

72.

Olivola, C. Y., Eubanks, D. L., & Lovelace, J. B. (2014). The many (distinctive) faces of leadership: Inferring leadership domain from facial appearance. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(5), 817-834.

73.

Olivola, C. Y., Funk, F., & Todorov, A. (2014). Social attributions from faces bias human choices. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(11), 566-570.

74.

Olivola, C. Y., Sussman, A. B., Tsetsos, K., Kang, O. E., & Todorov, A. (2012). Republicans prefer Republican-looking leaders: Political facial stereotypes predict candidate electoral success among right-leaning voters. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 3(5), 605-613.

75.

Olivola, C., Y., & Todorov, A. (2010). Fooled by first impressions? Reexamining the diagnostic value of appearance-based inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(2), 315-324.

76.

Oosterhof, N. N., & Todorov, A. (2008). The functional basis of face evaluation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(32), 11087-11092.

77.

Passini, F. T., & Norman, W. T. (1966). A universal conception of personality structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(1), 44-49.

78.

Penton-Voak, I. S., Pound, N., Little, A. C., &Perrett, D. I. (2006). Personality judgments from natural and composite facial images:More evidence for a “kernel of truth” in social perception. Social Cognition, 24(5), 607-640.

79.

Porter, S., England, L., Juodis, M., ten Brinke, L., & Wilson, K. (2008). Is the face the window to the soul?: Investigation of the accuracy of intuitive judgments of the trustworthiness of human faces. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 40(3), 171-177.

80.

Porter, S., ten Brinke, L., & Gustaw, C. (2010). Dangerous decisions: The impact of first impressions of trustworthiness on the evaluation of legal evidence and defendant culpability. Psychology, Crime & Law, 16(6), 477-491.

81.

Pound, N., Penton-Voak, I. S., & Brown, W. M. (2007). Facial symmetry is positively associated with self-reported extraversion. Personality and Individual Differences, 43(6), 1572-1582.

82.

Rezlescu, C., Duchaine, B., Olivola, C. Y., &Chater, N. (2012). Unfakeable facial configurations affect strategic choices in trust games with or without information about past behavior. PLoS ONE, 7(3), e34293.

83.

Rosenthal, R. (1994). Interpersonal expectancy effects: A 30-year perspective. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3(6), 176-179.

84.

Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. (2008). The face of success inferences from chief executive officers’appearance predict company profits. Psychological Science, 19(2), 109-111.

85.

Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. (2010). Democrats and Republicans can be differentiated from their faces. PLoS ONE, 5(1), e8733.

86.

Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., &Macrae, C. N. (2008). Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1019-1028.

87.

Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., Ozono, H., Nakashima, S., Yoshikawa, S., &Watabe, M. (2010). Polling the face:Prediction and consensus across cultures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(1), 1-15.

88.

Rule, N., O., Ambady, N., & Hallett, K., C. (2009). Female sexual orientation is perceived accurately, rapidly, and automatically from the face and its features. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(6), 1245-1251.

89.

Rule, N. O., Bjornsdottir, R. T., Tskhay, K. O., & Ambady, N. (2016). Subtle perceptions of male sexual orientation influence occupational opportunities. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(12), 1687-1704.

90.

Rule, N. O., Krendl, A. C., Ivcevic, Z., &Ambady, N. (2013). Accuracy and consensus in judgments of trustworthiness from faces:Behavioral and neural correlates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(3), 409-426.

91.

Samochowiec, J., Wänke, M., & Fiedler, K. (2010). Political ideology at face value. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1(3), 206-213.

92.

Schliht, E. J., Shinsuke, S., Camerer, C. F., Battaglia, P., & Nakayama, K. (2010). Human wagering behavior depends on opponents’ faces. PLoS ONE, 5(7), e11663.

93.

Sedikides, C., Gaertner, L., & Toguchi, Y. (2003). Pancultural self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(1), 60-79.

94.

Slepian, M. L., & Ames, D. R. (2016). Internalized impressions: The link between apparent facial trustworthiness and deceptive behavior is mediated by targets’ expectations of how they will be judged. Psychological Science, 27(2), 282-288.

95.

Stirrat, M., & Perrett, D. I. (2010). Valid facial cues to cooperation and trust: Male facial width and trustworthiness. Psychological Science, 21(3), 349-354.

96.

Stirrat, M., Stulp, G., & Pollet, T. V. (2012). Male facial width is associated with death by contact violence: narrow-faced males are more likely to die from contact violence. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(5), 551-556.

97.

Sussman, A. B., Petkova, K., & Todorov, A. (2013). Competence ratings in US predict presidential election outcomes in Bulgaria. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(4), 771-775.

98.

Suzuki, A., Tsukamoto, S., & Takahashi, Y. (2017). Faces tell everything in a just and biologically determined world: Lay theories behind face reading. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(1), 62-72.

99.

ten Brinke, L., Stimson, D., & Carney, D. R. (2014). Some evidence for unconscious lie detection. Psychological Science, 25(5), 1098-1105.

100.

Todorov, A. (2017). Face value: The irresistible influence of first impressions. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

101.

Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., &Hall, C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science, 308(5728), 1623-1626.

102.

Todorov, A., Olivola, C. Y., Dotsch, R., &Mende-Siedlecki, P. (2015). Social attributions from faces: Determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance. Annual Review of Psychology, 66, 519-545.

103.

Todorov, A., Pakrashi, M., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2009). Evaluating faces on trustworthiness after minimal time exposure. Social Cognition, 27(6), 813-833.

104.

Todorov, A., & Porter, J. M. (2014). Misleading first impressions: Different for different facial Images of the same person. Psychological Science, 25(7), 1404-1417.

105.

Valla, J. M., Ceci, S. J., & Williams, W. M. (2011). The accuracy of inferences about criminality based on facial appearance. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 5(1), 66-91.

106.

van’t Wout, M., & Sanfey, A. G. (2008). Friend or foe: The effect of implicit trustworthiness judgments in social decision making. Cognition, 108(3), 796-803.

107.

Vazire, S., & Gosling, S., D. (2004). e-Perceptions:Personality impressions based on personal websites. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 123-132.

108.

Walker, M., Jiang, F., Vetter, T., & Sczesny, S. (2011). Universals and cultural differences in forming personality trait judgments from faces. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(6), 609-617.

109.

Wang, D., Nair, K., Kouchaki, M., Zajac, E. J., & Zhao, X. (2019). A case of evolutionary mismatch? Why facial width-to-height ratio may not predict behavioral tendencies. Psychological Science, 30(7), 1074-1081.

110.

Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions:Making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychological Science, 17(7), 592-598.

111.

Yuki, M., Maddux, W. W., & Masuda, T. (2007). Are the windows to the soul the same in the East and West? Cultural differences in using the eyes and mouth as cues to recognize emotions in Japan and the United States. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(2), 303-311.

112.

Zebrowitz, L. A. (1999). Reading Faces: Window to the soul? Boulder, CO: Westview.

113.

Zebrowitz, L. A., Andreoletti, C., Collins, M. A., Lee, S. Y., Blumenthal, J. (1998). Bright, bad, babyfaced boys: Appearance stereotypes do not always yield self-fulfilling prophecy effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(5), 1300-1320.

114.

Zebrowitz, L., & McDonald, S. (1991). The impact of litigants’ baby-facedness and attractiveness on adjudications in small claims courts. Law and Human Behavior, 15(6), 603-623.

115.

Zebrowitz, L. A., Montepare, J. M., & Lee, H. K. (1993). They don’t all look alike: Individual impressions of other racial groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(1), 85-101.

116.

Zebrowitz, L. A., Voinescu, L., & Collins, M. A. (1996). “Wide-eyed” and “crooked-faced”:Determinants of perceived and real honesty across the life span. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(12), 1258-1269.

117.

Zwebner, Y., Sellier, A.-L., Rosenfeld, N., Goldenberg, J., & Mayo, R. (2017). We look like our names: The manifestation of name stereotypes in facial appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(4), 527-554.

Korean Journal of Psychology: General