Learning about faces: effects of trustworthiness on affective evaluation.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

• Facial evaluations are crucial for social interactions.
• Trustworthiness, valence, and arousal are key dimensions of face perception.
• Understanding how these dimensions interact with social learning is important.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between perceived facial trustworthiness, valence, and arousal.
• To examine how perceived trustworthiness influences the learning of social associations (friend/enemy) based on emotional expressions.
• To assess the impact of learned associations on subsequent face evaluations.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Correlated trustworthiness, valence, and arousal judgments of faces.
• Experiment 2: Participants learned to associate neutral faces (varying in trustworthiness) with emotional expressions (happy/angry) and categorize them as 'friend' or 'enemy'.
• Measured categorization accuracy and post-learning face evaluations.

Main Results:

• Experiment 1: Positive correlation between valence and trustworthiness; negative correlation between arousal and both valence and trustworthiness.
• Experiment 2: No effect of trustworthiness-expression congruency on learning efficiency.
• Post-learning, 'enemy' faces were rated more negatively and arousing than 'friend' faces, indicating effective affective learning.
• However, untrustworthy faces remained more negative and arousing than trustworthy faces post-learning.

Conclusions:

• Facial trustworthiness does not impede the learning of associations between faces and social information (positive/negative).
• Learned social associations effectively alter the affective value of faces.
• Perceived facial trustworthiness exerts a lasting influence on face evaluation, independent of learned associations.