Trustworthiness perception is mandatory: Task instructions do not modulate fast periodic visual stimulation...

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Social Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Human perception often assumes spontaneous responses to facial trustworthiness.
• The mandatory nature of facial trust processing remains unclear, despite societal implications of biased trust.
• Understanding trust processing is crucial for addressing societal consequences of biased trusting behavior.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether neural responses for trustworthiness discrimination are mandatory or influenced by task instructions.
• To determine if focusing on facial trustworthiness alters neural discrimination responses.
• To examine the spontaneity of neural processing of facial trust.

Main Methods:

• Employed a fast periodic visual stimulation electroencephalography (EEG) oddball paradigm.
• Utilized a neural marker of trustworthiness discrimination at 1 Hz.
• Tested participants under three conditions: size judgment, explicit trust judgment, and a primed financial lending context.

Main Results:

• Significant trustworthiness discrimination responses at 1 Hz were observed across all three experimental conditions.
• No significant effect of task instruction on trustworthiness discrimination was detected.
• Bayesian analyses indicated moderate to decisive evidence that task instruction does not modulate trustworthiness discrimination.

Conclusions:

• Neural discrimination of facial trustworthiness is a mandatory process.
• Trustworthiness processing is remarkably spontaneous and occurs regardless of explicit task focus.
• The mandatory nature of this process may explain the ubiquity of facial trustworthiness impressions, even when they are unreliable.