Perceiver and target partisanship shift facial trustworthiness effects on likability

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Political Psychology
• Person Perception

Background:

• Affective polarization in the U.S. fuels intergroup tension, influencing fundamental aspects of social cognition, including person perception.
• Partisanship disclosure polarizes face impressions, leading to more positive views of in-group partisans and negative views of out-group partisans.
• The interaction between partisanship and other facial cues, like trustworthiness, on impression formation remains under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how shared and opposing partisanship influence the relationship between facial trustworthiness cues and subsequent likability impressions.
• To explore the role of perceived partisan threat in mediating these effects.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted with conservative and liberal participants assessing face impressions.
• Participants evaluated faces based on trustworthiness and likability after partisanship disclosure.
• Experiment 2 experimentally manipulated inter-party threat levels.

Main Results:

• A stronger positive association between facial trustworthiness and likability was found for shared partisan faces compared to opposing partisan faces.
• This effect was linked to perceived partisan threat in Experiment 1.
• Experiment 2 demonstrated that increasing inter-party threat amplified the derogation of opposing partisans and enhancement of shared partisans.

Conclusions:

• Partisanship not only polarizes overall face impressions but also modulates the impact of specific facial cues like trustworthiness on impression formation.
• Perceived inter-party threat significantly exacerbates partisan biases in person perception.
• These findings underscore the pervasive influence of political partisanship on fundamental social perception processes and have implications for intergroup behavior.