First Impressions From Faces

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.

Keywords

first impressions overgeneralization effects facial cues

Research on first impressions has come a long way since the 1946 publication of Solomon Asch’s article “Forming Impressions of Personality.” This classic article launched decades of research examining how perceivers integrate distilled trait information about a target person, presented in the form of lists of trait words, to arrive at an overall positive or negative impression. This work taught us about central traits: Knowledge that a person is warm skews impressions in a positive direction despite other negative information, whereas knowledge that a person is cold skews impressions in a negative direction; by contrast, peripheral traits such as politeness or bluntness carry no undue weight. Asch’s work also taught us about primacy effects, whereby a person who is first perceived as industrious and then as stubborn, for example, is judged more positively than one who is first perceived as stubborn. Almost 40 years after Asch’s landmark research, Reuben Baron and I argued that although this approach taught us much about the processing of information in impression formation, a fuller understanding required identifying the stimulus information that reveals traits such as warmth or politeness, since these are rarely presented to people in word lists (McArthur & Baron, 1983; see Secord, Dukes, & Bevan, 1954, for an early emphasis on stimulus information). The present article considers facial information as a source of first impressions. More specifically, it examines judgments about psychological qualities of strangers based on their neutral-expression faces in static photographs.

Cultural wisdom instructs us not to judge a book by its cover. This warning suggests both that our natural inclination is to judge people by their appearance and that doing so will lead to erroneous first impressions. The warning is correct on both counts. First, impressions from faces are fast and automatic. They are elicited by brief exposure, in some cases 100 milliseconds or less (Willis & Todorov, 2006). Moreover, there is remarkable consensus in first impressions of traits such as warmth and dominance, including cross-cultural agreement that extends even to indigenous people from the remote Bolivian rainforest (Zebrowitz et al., 2012). There is also evidence that infants’ and young children’s responses to faces are similar to those of adults (Cogsdill, Todorov, Spelke, & Banaji, 2014; Keating & Bai, 1986; Langlois, Roggman, & Rieser-Danner, 1990; Montepare & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1989). Second, although some first impressions of traits show better than chance accuracy (Boshyan, Zebrowitz, Franklin, McCormick, & Carré, 2014; Zebrowitz et al., 2014), impressions can also be wrong (Rule, Krendl, Ivcevic, & Ambady, 2013; Todorov, Olivola, Dotsch, & Mende-Siedlecki, 2015; Zebrowitz & Rhodes, 2004). Errors are particularly troublesome given that traits inferred from people’s facial appearance are linked to significant real-world social outcomes, including electoral success (Olivola & Todorov, 2010), financial success (Rule & Ambady 2011), and judicial decisions (Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991).

These results are paradoxical. On the one hand, people begin forming first impressions from faces at an early age, and such impressions are shared across cultures, which suggests that they serve some evolutionarily adaptive function. On the other hand, consensual first impressions from faces can be wrong. This paradox is resolved by the proposition that these impressions are often overgeneralizations of an adaptive response. Specifically, facial qualities that ordinarily reveal some personal characteristic that is important for adaptive social interaction can influence first impressions even when the individual being judged does not actually have that personal characteristic, but only physically resembles someone who does (Zebrowitz & Collins, 1997). Below, I review research that applies this overgeneralization proposition to answer three questions: Why do we form consensual first impressions of people from facial appearance? What impressions do we form? And what facial cues do we use?

Why Do We Form Consensual First Impressions From Faces?

Four overgeneralization effects provide an explanation for consensual face-based first impressions that transcend perceiver age and culture, yet may be erroneous (Zebrowitz, 2011). In baby-face overgeneralization, the adaptive value of responding appropriately to babies, such as giving protection or inhibiting aggression, produces a strong tendency to respond to facial qualities that characterize babies, and this is overgeneralized to first impressions of people whose facial structure resembles that of a baby, regardless of their actual age. In familiar-face overgeneralization, the adaptive value of differentiating friends from foes or known individuals from strangers produces a strong tendency to respond to face familiarity, and this is overgeneralized to differentiated impressions of strangers who vary in their resemblance to known individuals. In unfit-face overgeneralization, the adaptive value of recognizing evolutionarily unfit people with genetic anomalies or disease, which allows one to reject them as mates or avoid contagion, produces a strong tendency to respond to facial qualities that mark low fitness, and this is overgeneralized to impressions of unattractive people whose facial features resemble those of individuals who are low in fitness. In emotional-face overgeneralization, the adaptive value of responding appropriately to emotional expressions, such as avoiding a person with an angry expression or approaching a person with a happy one, produces a strong tendency to respond to facial qualities that reveal emotions, and this is overgeneralized to impressions of people whose facial structures resemble particular emotional expressions.

What Impressions Do We Form?

Paralleling early work using trait adjectives that identified warmth/trustworthiness and power/dominance as the fundamental dimensions underlying trait impressions (Rosenberg, Nelson, & Vivekananthan, 1968), research using faces also has identified these two dimensions (Todorov et al., 2015). The four face-overgeneralization effects contribute to first impressions of traits that are captured by these dimensions.

Consistent with baby-face overgeneralization, impressions of childlike traits, including high warmth, low power, and low competence, are elicited by faces that look more babyish than average, as assessed either by human raters or through computer modeling of facial metrics, and these effects hold true regardless of face age, gender, or race (Berry & McArthur, 1986; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998; Zebrowitz, Fellous, Mignault, & Andreoletti, 2003).

Consistent with familiar-face overgeneralization, people not only prefer faces they have seen before, an effect known as the mere-exposure effect, but they also prefer novel faces that are similar to previously seen ones, a generalized mere-exposure effect (Zebrowitz, White, & Wieneke, 2008). Also, more familiar-looking strangers are judged as more trustworthy than strangers who look less familiar (DeBruine, 2002; Zebrowitz, Bronstad, & Lee, 2007). When two strangers both look familiar, overgeneralization effects depend on the source of familiarity. Someone who looks familiar because she resembles a person who had treated the perceiver kindly is treated favorably, whereas one who resembles a person who had treated the perceiver irritably is avoided (Lewicki, 1985). Other evidence that facial unfamiliarity influences impressions is provided by White judges’ reactions to faces that have more prototypically Black features. Regardless of their actual race, people with such faces are perceived to have more negative traits (Blair, Judd, Sadler, & Jenkins, 2002).

Consistent with unfit-face overgeneralization, computer modeling has shown that unattractive faces resemble faces marked by genetic anomalies more than do attractive faces and that, like the anomalous faces, unattractive faces elicit impressions of lower warmth, power, competence, and health than do attractive faces, even in normal, healthy individuals (Zebrowitz et al., 2003). Notably, this overgeneralization effect at least partially accounts for more positive impressions of more attractive people, dubbed the attractiveness halo effect (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991).

Consistent with emotional-face overgeneralization, higher dominance and lower warmth are perceived not only in angry faces but also in neutral-expression faces that show more resemblance to angry expressions, as assessed either by human raters (Montepare & Dobish 2003) or via computer methods (Said, Sebe, & Todorov, 2009; Zebrowitz, Kikuchi, & Fellous, 2010) and as manipulated by having targets lower their eyebrows (Keating, Mazur, & Segall, 1981). On the other hand, higher warmth is perceived in neutral faces that show greater resemblance to happy expressions, and lower dominance is perceived in those that show greater resemblance to surprised expressions.

Face-overgeneralization effects fuel group stereotypes. Babyfaceness varies with gender, and the greater babyfaceness of women contributes to impressions of women as warmer and less powerful than men (Friedman & Zebrowitz, 1992). Computer modeling has revealed that facial resemblance to genetically anomalous faces increases with age, and the greater resemblance of older faces to genetically anomalous faces contributes to impressions of older people as less warm and healthy than younger people (Zebrowitz et al., 2003). Familiarity varies with race. The lesser familiarity of other-race faces contributes to in-group favoritism and racial stereotypes, enhancing negative impressions of other-race faces and diminishing positive ones (Zebrowitz et al., 2007). Computer modeling has revealed that resemblance to emotion expressions also varies with race. Neutral-expression Black faces resemble happy expressions more and angry expressions less than do White faces. These differences suppress White perceivers’ impressions of Black individuals as more hostile, less trustworthy, and less competent than White individuals, as shown by the finding that statistically controlling race differences in emotion resemblance increases the negativity of White perceivers’ impressions of Black faces. Like Black faces, neutral-expression Korean faces look more emotionally positive than White faces, which contributes to White judges’ impressions of Koreans as less hostile, more trustworthy, and more competent than Whites—reflecting the “model minority” Asian stereotype (Zebrowitz et al., 2010). Emotion resemblance also varies with gender (Hess, Adams, & Kleck, 2004; Zebrowitz et al., 2010). Neutral-expression female faces show greater resemblance to fearful and surprised expressions than do neutral-expression male faces, which show greater resemblance to angry expressions. This may augment the stereotypic impression that women are less dominant than men.

What Facial Cues Do We Use?

Although research has indicated that we are often unaware of the facial cues that influence impressions, it has also shown that they are consistent with overgeneralization effects.

Babyfaceness

Consistent with baby-face overgeneralization, facial cues that differentiate real babies from adults influence the perceived babyfaceness of adults and associated impressions. These include larger eyes, higher eyebrows, smaller nose bridges, rounder and less angular faces, thicker lips, and a lower vertical placement of features, which creates a higher forehead and a shorter chin (Berry & McArthur, 1986; Montepare & Zebrowitz, 1998).

Familiarity

Many facial cues to familiarity depend on the unique experiences of the perceiver. However, some may reflect shared experiences. Most notably, other-race faces are likely to appear less familiar to perceivers than own-race faces. Further, race-related cues, including skin tone and facial structure, may vary in familiarity and associated impressions even among faces that are perceived as being the same race (Blair et al., 2002).

Fitness

Facial cues that evolutionary psychologists have linked to fitness include averageness (a facial configuration close to the population mean), symmetry, sex-linked features, and youthfulness. It has been argued that averageness and symmetry signal fitness because they show the ability to develop normally despite environmental stressors. Averageness also signals genetic diversity, which is associated with a strong immune system. High masculinity in male faces may indicate fitness because it shows an ability to withstand the stress that testosterone places on the immune system. High femininity in female faces may signal fitness by association with sexual maturity and fertility. Youthfulness is related to fitness inasmuch as aging often carries declines in cognitive and physical functioning. These fitness cues influence perceived attractiveness, which is associated with impressions of fitness-related traits (e.g., dominance and health; Rhodes, 2006).

Emotion resemblance

Research has not systematically investigated which cues contribute to emotion resemblance in neutral-expression faces and associated impressions, but it is likely to be those that differentiate various emotion expressions. For example, naturally lower eyebrows on a neutral-expression face are likely to make the person look angrier, naturally higher eyebrows are likely to make the person look more surprised, and naturally upturned corners of the mouth are likely to make the person look happier. As noted above, gender and race also affect the degree to which facial structures resemble emotion expressions (Zebrowitz et al., 2010). However, specific facial cues that account for these group differences remain to be determined.

Individual Differences in First Impressions

Despite commonalities in first impressions across diverse perceivers, individual differences should be acknowledged. Impressions depend not only on what information faces provide but also on perceivers’ prior perceptual experiences and behavioral goals.

An illustration of how prior perceptual experiences could produce individual differences in trait impressions is provided by a study in which perceivers viewed a series of individuals whose different face shapes (short, average, long) covaried with different personality traits (very fair, average, or very unfair). For one group of perceivers, individuals with short faces were fair and individuals with long faces were unfair, whereas this perceptual association was reversed for a second group, and individuals with average-length faces were described as average in fairness for both groups. Perceivers for whom short faces had distinguished fair individuals judged a new short-faced person as fairer than a new long-faced or average-faced person, a pattern that was reversed among those perceivers for whom fair individuals had been distinguished by long faces (Hill, Lewicki, Czyzewska, & Schuller, 1990).

Individual differences also may be influenced by perceivers’ goals. For example, people who live in cultures with a high incidence of parasites, and thus have a higher need to avoid unfit associates, show a stronger preference for physically attractive mates (Gangestad & Buss, 1993). Perceivers who feel more vulnerable to disease show more negative reactions to ethnic out-groups (Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2011). These findings have obvious implications for individual differences in unfit-face and familiar-face overgeneralization effects.

What About Accuracy?

Overgeneralization and accuracy are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, overgeneralization could produce statistically significant relationships between impressions of people based on their appearance and the actual behavior of those people via self-fulfilling prophecy effects, whereby appearance elicits social interactions that elicit the expected behaviors. Overgeneralization also could produce significantly inaccurate perceptions via self-defeating-prophecy effects, whereby the social interactions elicited by appearance prompt behaviors that defy impressions. Other mechanisms that could yield relationships between appearance and behavior include biological links between facial appearance and traits, environmental factors that influence both, and an influence of traits on appearance (Zebrowitz & Collins, 1997). Perceivers may be sensitive to actual relationships between facial appearance and traits through either perceptual learning or an evolutionary preparedness.

Understanding trait-impression accuracy requires considering not only various theoretical mechanisms but also the statistical methods used to assess it. Typically, correlations are computed between perceivers’ face-based ratings of traits (e.g., aggressiveness, competence) and indices of corresponding trait measures of the people whose faces are rated, and these correlations are compared with chance. Although some research has shown above-chance accuracy, effect sizes are often quite small.

Conclusions

Many first impressions from faces are rooted in adaptive reactions to appearance-based cues that identify people of a particular age, level of familiarity, level of fitness, or emotional state. Facial qualities that ordinarily distinguish any of these categories of people can influence first impressions even when the person being judged does not actually belong to the category but only physically resembles those who do. The resulting overgeneralized impressions can predict significant social consequences in employment, judicial, and political settings, to name a few. Until there is clear evidence regarding which trait impressions from faces show sufficient accuracy to warrant using them to guide our behavior, it would seem wise to heed the admonition “don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Joann Montepare and Kameel Nasr for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Funding

This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant AG38375.

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