Where You Look Is What You Get: Individual Fixation Height Predicts Biases in Face Perception.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Neuroscience
• Social perception

Background:

• Human face perception involves complex processing of various facial regions.
• Individual differences in visual attention (gaze patterns) on faces are well-documented.
• These unique fixation habits may influence how individuals interpret facial information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if habitual facial fixation patterns bias individual impressions of faces.
• To determine if gaze proximity to specific facial regions (eyes, mouth) correlates with perceptual judgments.
• To test if individual gaze tendencies predict subjective trustworthiness ratings of manipulated faces.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of eye-tracking data during a scene viewing task to record facial fixation patterns.
• Collection of perceptual judgments on valence, arousal, trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness for whole and partial faces.
• Experiment 2: Observers judged trustworthiness of subtly manipulated faces based on their fixation habits.

Main Results:

• A linear mixed-effects model showed that fixation proximity to facial regions explained alignment between whole-face and feature-specific ratings.
• Individual differences in habitual gaze proximity to eyes, nose, and mouth significantly predicted impression alignment.
• Gaze direction (higher vs. lower face fixation) weakly predicted preference for trustworthiness in manipulated facial stimuli.

Conclusions:

• Habitual gaze patterns systematically bias face perception and trait inference.
• Individual fixation behavior shapes the contribution of specific facial regions to overall impression.
• Eye movement patterns offer insights into subjective and potentially diverging interpretations of facial cues.