First Impressions From Faces

doi:10.1177/0963721416683996

Paper

First Impressions From Faces

Published Jun 1, 2017 · Leslie A. Zebrowitz

Current Directions in Psychological Science

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136

Citations

5

Influential Citations

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Abstract

Although cultural wisdom warns us not to judge a book by its cover, we seem unable to inhibit this tendency even though it can lead to inaccurate impressions of people’s psychological traits and has significant social consequences. One explanation for this paradox is that first impressions from faces reflect overgeneralizations of adaptive impressions of categories of people with structurally similar faces (including babies, familiar or unfamiliar people, evolutionarily unfit people, and people expressing a variety of emotions). Research testing these overgeneralization hypotheses has elucidated why we form first impressions from faces, what impressions we form, and what cues influence these impressions. This article focuses on commonalities in impressions across diverse perceivers, with additional brief attention given to individual differences in impressions and impression accuracy.

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Study Snapshot

First impressions from faces often reflect overgeneralizations of adaptive impressions of categories of people with similar faces, leading to inaccurate impressions of psychological traits and social consequences.

PopulationOlder adults (50-71 years)

Sample size24

MethodsObservational

OutcomesBody Mass Index projections

ResultsSocial networks mitigate obesity in older groups.

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Paper

First Impressions From Faces

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References

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

Social attributions from faces are influenced by perceptual and nonperceptual factors, and can predict important social outcomes like investment decisions and leader selection.

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Older adults and younger adults are equally accurate in recognizing differences in the aggressiveness of young men based on facial cues, such as facial width-to-height ratio, attractiveness, and masculinity.

Inferring Character From Faces

Children as young as 3 can accurately attribute character traits to faces, with consistent attributions observed in experiments.

First Impressions From Faces Among U.S. and Culturally Isolated Tsimane’ People in the Bolivian Rainforest

First impressions of attractiveness, babyfaceness, and traits among Tsimane' and U.S. cultures show cross-cultural similarities, with some effects moderated by perceiver and face culture.

Citations

Discussion on the Influence Mechanism of First Impressions

First impressions are not infallible and can be influenced by personal and external factors, making effective social interaction based on managing these impressions crucial.

Considering How Machine‐Learning Algorithms (Re)produce Social Biases in Generated Faces

Machine learning algorithms, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs), can introduce biases, particularly racial biases, into generated faces, threatening the validity of research studies.

Navigating the Social Environment: Linking Motivations, Impressions, and Behaviors Via a Sampling Approach to Trustworthiness.

People's sampling patterns in the social environment influence their trustworthiness impressions and subsequent behaviors, such as partner selection in trust games and trustworthiness expectations.

Anchoring has little effect when forming first impressions of facial attractiveness

Anchoring has little effect on real-world impression formation when forming first impressions of facial attractiveness.

Multimodal Cues to Change Your Mind: The Intertwining of Faces, Voices, and Behaviors in Impression Updating.

Faces and voices both influence impression updating, but voices have a stronger impact on updating impressions than faces, depending on the context.

A single modality apparent first impression personality recognition model with temporal emotion based LSTM

This study developed a method to predict personality traits from a single source, facial information, achieving an accuracy of 90.67% on the CharLearn Dataset.

Facial impressions of niceness influence children's interpretations of peers' ambiguous behavior.

Children use facial impressions of niceness to form interpretations of ambiguous behavior and intentions as early as 4 years of age, potentially leading to differential treatment for peers perceived as high-nice.

First impressions: Do faces with scars and palsies influence warmth, competence and humanization?

Faces with scars and palsies are perceived as less warm, competent, and dehumanized, regardless of the aetiology of the anomaly.