Influence of face- and observer-based factors on social perception of faces

Our visual system is remarkably good at extracting socially relevant information from faces (e.g., trustworthiness, aggressiveness). Here we investigated whether, and, if so, how face-based and observer-based properties affect such social perception of faces. We first tested how different parts of faces contribute to social judgements about faces (e.g., trustworthiness). We asked participants to rate faces shown as eyes region only, eyes region occluded, or whole faces. We found the similar social perception of faces across the three conditions. We then tested whether self-reported personality affects participants' judgements about faces. We found that participants with higher self-reported trustworthiness judged faces as more trustworthy compared to those with low self-reported trustworthiness. This was not the case for extroversion and likeability judgements. Together, these results indicate that social perception of faces relies on both face- and observer-based information