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Creating Virtual-hand and Virtual-face Illusions to Investigate Self-representation
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Published on: March 1, 2017

Evaluating face trustworthiness: a model based approach.

Alexander Todorov1, Sean G Baron, Nikolaas N Oosterhof

  • 1Department of Psychology and Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. atodorov@princeton.edu.

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
|November 19, 2008
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Facial trustworthiness influences our initial reactions. Brain imaging reveals the amygdala and other regions respond to untrustworthy faces and also to faces at the extremes or middle of the trustworthiness spectrum.

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Social Psychology
  • Computer Science

Background:

  • Facial trustworthiness judgments guide social interactions and approach/avoidance behaviors.
  • These judgments correlate with general valence evaluations of individuals.
  • Understanding the neural basis of trustworthiness perception is crucial for social cognition research.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To develop a computational model for representing facial trustworthiness.
  • To investigate the neural correlates of processing faces varying in trustworthiness using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
  • To explore how different brain regions respond to faces along a trustworthiness continuum.

Main Methods:

  • Study 1: Developed a computational model for face trustworthiness based on human judgments.
  • Study 2: Generated novel faces using the model, spanning a range of trustworthiness.
  • fMRI was used to measure brain activity while participants viewed these faces without explicit evaluation.

Main Results:

  • The right amygdala showed a negative linear response to increasing facial untrustworthiness.
  • The putamen and anterior insula exhibited similar negative linear responses.
  • The left amygdala showed a quadratic response, strongest for faces at trustworthiness extremes.
  • Medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus displayed quadratic responses, peaking for faces in the mid-trustworthiness range.

Conclusions:

  • Facial trustworthiness processing engages specific neural circuits, including the amygdala, putamen, and insula.
  • These brain regions exhibit distinct response patterns (linear and quadratic) along the trustworthiness dimension.
  • The findings highlight the automatic and nuanced neural processing of trustworthiness from faces, even without explicit judgment.