A first impression of the future

Funding Information: This research was supported by Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Research Award DE190101043 (to C.S.), an Experimental Psychology Society Small Research grant (to C.S.) and an ARC Discovery Award DP170104602 (to C.S. and A.Y). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank Dr Jemma Collova from the School of Indigenous Studies, University of Western Australia, for helpful feedback on a draft.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

First impressions from faces: Integrating facial dimensions and social categories

When we meet a person for the first time, we can gain a wealth of information from perceiving their face - for example, their age, sex, ethnicity and level of attractiveness. However, we also make more subjective facial judgments of the character or personality of the person depicted as well; for example, by judging them on their trustworthiness or competence. Since these facial first impressions are linked to important real-life consequences, it is important that we have a solid theoretical understanding of which judgments are important and how they are made. Here, I first model the dimensions underlying first impressions made to highly variable, naturalistic photographs of faces and find three key dimensions: approachability, dominance and youthful attractiveness. I then examine how categorical facial information (such as the gender or culture of the face or perceiver) interacts with these key facial impression dimensions, finding that there are differences in the structure and evaluation of trait impressions by face and perceiver gender and culture. My findings demonstrate that while dimensional approaches have brought a useful guiding framework to the field of facial first impressions, categorical social groups also need to be included within these models. Specifically, while the functionality of key facial impression dimensions may be similar across social groups, the cues or specific traits underlying these dimensions seem to differ depending on the social group of the perceiver or target face

A basic guide to Psychomorph

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Testing the functional basis of first impressions : Dimensions for children’s faces are not the same as for adults’ faces

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Three's a crowd : Fast ensemble perception of first impressions of trustworthiness

We thank R. Chakravarthi for his helpful advice and comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and T. Burton for help in data collection. This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant 220101026. The data reported in the present manuscript were presented at ECVP conference 2022 and at Plymouth EPS meeting 2023. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Children show adult-like facial appearance biases when trusting others

A large research literature details the powerful behavioral consequences that a trustworthy appearance can have on adult behavior. Surprisingly, few studies have investigated how these biases operate among children, despite the theoretical importance of understanding when these biases emerge in development. Here, we used an economic trust game to systematically investigate trust behavior in young children (5-8 years), older children (9-12 years) and adults. Participants played the game with child and adult ‘partners’ that varied in emotional expression (mild displays of happiness and anger, and a neutral baseline), which is known to modulate perceived trustworthiness. Strikingly, both groups of children showed adult-like facial appearance biases when trusting others, with no ‘own-age bias’. There were no developmental differences in the magnitude of this effect, which supports adult-like overgeneralisation of these transient emotion cues into enduring trait impressions that guide interpersonal behavior from as early as 5 years of age. Irrespective of whether or not they were explicitly directed to do so, all participants modulated their behavior in line with the emotion cues: more generous/trusting with happy partners, followed by neutral and then angry. These findings speak to the impressive sophistication of children’s early social cognition and provide key insights into the causal mechanisms driving trait impressions, suggesting they are not necessarily contingent upon protracted social experience

Adults’ facial impressions of children’s niceness, but not shyness, show modest accuracy

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the parents and children who helped make this research possible. We would also like to thank Romina Palermo for providing us the opportunity to contact her sample of parent and child participants, and to use some of her existing data. Finally, we would like to thank the examiners who provided thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper presented in a thesis. JC, CS, LJ and GR conceived the study and edited the manuscript. JC programmed the experiment, collected undergraduate participant data, performed the statistical analyses, and drafted the first manuscript. EB coordinated image collection. All authors participated in the study design, and read and approved the final manuscript. Funding: This research was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence Grant award to GR [CE110001021], ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award to CS [DE190101043], ARC Discovery Award to GR and CS [DP170104602], ARC Discovery Award to LJ [DP140101743] and a Research Training Program Stipend to JC.Peer reviewedPostprin

Best-worst scaling improves measurement of first impressions

This research was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders (CE110001021), an ARC Discovery Project grant to GR and CS (DP170104602) and an ARC Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award to GR (DP130102300). The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Evidence for a Kernel of Truth in Children’s Facial Impressions of Children’s Niceness, but not Shyness

Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the parents and children who helped make this research possible. We would like to thank Romina Palermo for providing us the opportunity to contact her sample of participants and to use some existing data. We also thank Lou Ewing for sharing the Zeb the Alien Scientist testing materials, and Saba Siddique for comments regarding a manuscript draft. Finally, we would like to thank Kaitlyn Turbett, Dielle Horne, Saba Siddique, Chloe Giffard, and Maira Vicente Braga, for help testing participants. JC, LJ, GR, and CS conceived the study and helped to draft and edit the manuscript. JC programmed the experiment, collected most participant data, performed the statistical analyses and drafted the first manuscript draft. EB coordinated image collection and testing schedules. All authors participated in the study design, and read, provided critical revisions and approved the final manuscript. The study methods, hypotheses and analyses were pre-registered(https://osf.io/kjtva/registrations). Funding: This research was supported by an APR Internship Academic Mentor Grant to CS, an Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence Grant award to GR [CE110001021], ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award to CS [DE190101043], ARC Discovery Grant to GR and CS [DP170104602], ARC Discovery Grant to LJ [140101743], and a Research Training Program stipend to JC.Peer reviewedPostprin