Culturally learned first impressions occur rapidly and automatically and emerge early in development.

Previous research indicates that first impressions from faces are the products of automatic and rapid processing and emerge early in development. These features have been taken as evidence that first impressions have a phylogenetic origin. We examine whether first impressions acquired through learning can also possess these features. First, we confirm that adults rate a person as more intelligent when they are wearing glasses (Study 1). Next, we show this inference persists when participants are instructed to ignore the glasses (Study 2) and when viewing time is restricted to 100 ms (Study 3). Finally, we show that 6-year-old, but not 4-year-old, children perceive individuals wearing glasses to be more intelligent, indicating that the effect is seen relatively early in development (Study 4). These data indicate that automaticity, rapid access and early emergence are not evidence that first impressions have an innate origin. Rather, these features are equally compatible with a learning model.

Young children seek out biased information about social groups.

Understanding the origins of prejudice necessitates exploring the ways in which children participate in the construction of biased representations of social groups. We investigate whether young children actively seek out information that supports and extends their initial intergroup biases. In Studies 1 and 2, we show that children choose to hear a story that contains positive information about their own group and negative information about another group rather than a story that contains negative information about their own group and positive information about the other group. In a third study, we show that children choose to present biased information to others, thus demonstrating that the effects of information selection can start to propagate through social networks. In Studies 4 and 5, we further investigate the nature of children's selective information seeking and show that children prefer ingroup-favouring information to other types of biased information and even to balanced, unbiased information. Together, this work shows that children are not merely passively recipients of social information; they play an active role in the creation and transmission of intergroup attitudes.

Are upside-down faces perceived as "less human"?

According to perceptual dehumanization theory (PDT), faces are only perceived as "truly human" when processed in a configural fashion. Consistent with this theory, previous research indicates that when faces are inverted, a manipulation hypothesized to disrupt configural processing, the individuals depicted are attributed fewer uniquely human qualities. In a seminal paper, Hugenberg et al. (2016) reported that faces appeared less creative, less thoughtful, less empathetic, and possessed less "humanness" when inverted. Across four highly powered and preregistered experiments, we demonstrate that inversion does not influence the attribution of uniquely human traits specifically. Rather, in line with research on face processing, inversion impedes face encoding more generally, causing trait attributions to tend toward the mean. Positively valanced faces (i.e., those judged to be trustworthy when presented upright) are perceived to be less creative, considerate, thoughtful, and empathetic when inverted. Conversely, negatively valanced faces (i.e., those judged to be untrustworthy when presented upright) are judged to be more creative, considerate, thoughtful, and empathetic when inverted. Furthermore, we show that the effect of inversion on judgments of "humanness" reflects a general phenomenon that can be replicated with other (nonface) stimulus categories that also possess a canonical orientation. These findings suggest that a key line of evidence for PDT is considerably less convincing than it first appears. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Preferential looking studies of trustworthiness detection confound structural and expressive cues to facial trustworthiness.

On encountering a stranger, we spontaneously attribute to them character traits (e.g., trustworthiness, intelligence) based on their facial appearance. Participants can base impressions on structural face cues-the stable aspects of facial appearance that support identity recognition-or expression cues, such as the presence of a smile. It has been reported that 6- to 8-month-old infants attend to faces that adults judge to be trustworthy in preference to faces judged untrustworthy. These results are striking because the face stimuli employed were ostensibly emotion neutral. Consequently, these preferential looking effects have been taken as evidence for innate sensitivity to structural face cues to trustworthiness. However, scrutiny of the emotion rating procedure used with adults suggests that the face stimuli employed may have been judged emotion neutral only when interleaved with more obvious examples of facial affect. This means that the faces may vary in emotional expression when compared to each other. Here, we report new evidence obtained from adult raters that the stimuli used in these studies confound trustworthiness and untrustworthiness with the presence of happiness and anger, respectively. These findings suggest that the preferential looking effects described in infants are compatible with a preference for positive facial affect and may not reflect early sensitivity to structural face cues to trustworthiness.

The influence of fake news on face-trait learning.

Humans spontaneously attribute a wide range of traits to conspecifics based on their facial appearance. Unsurprisingly, previous findings indicate that this 'person evaluation' is affected by information provided about the target's past actions and behaviours. Strikingly, many news items shared on social media sites (e.g., Twitter) describe the actions of individuals who are often shown in accompanying images. This kind of material closely resembles that encountered by participants in previous studies of face-trait learning. We therefore sought to determine whether Twitter posts that pair facial images with favourable and unfavourable biographical information also modulate subsequent trait evaluation of the people depicted. We also assessed whether the effects of this information-valence manipulation were attenuated by the presence of the "disputed tag", introduced by Twitter as a means to combat the influence of fake-news. Across two preregistered experiments, we found that fictional tweets that paired facial images with details of the person's positive or negative actions affected the extent to which readers subsequently judged the faces depicted to be trustworthy. When the rating phase followed immediately after the study phase, the presence of the disputed tag attenuated the effect of the behavioural information (Experiment 1: N = 128; Mage = 34.06; 89 female, 36 male, 3 non-binary; 116 White British). However, when the rating phase was conducted after a 10-minute delay, the presence of the disputed tag had no significant effect (Experiment 2: N = 128; Mage = 29.12; 78 female, 44 male, 4 non-binary, 2 prefer not to say; 110 White British). Our findings suggest that disputed tags may have relatively little impact on the long-term face-trait learning that occurs via social media. As such, fake news stories may have considerable potential to shape users' person evaluation.

The cultural learning account of first impressions.

Humans spontaneously attribute character traits to strangers based on their facial appearance. Although these 'first impressions' typically have no basis in reality, some authors have assumed that they have an innate origin. By contrast, the Trait Inference Mapping (TIM) account proposes that first impressions are products of culturally acquired associative mappings that allow activation to spread from representations of facial appearance to representations of trait profiles. According to TIM, cultural instruments, including propaganda, illustrated storybooks, art and iconography, ritual, film, and TV, expose many individuals within a community to common sources of correlated face-trait experience, yielding first impressions that are shared by many, but typically inaccurate. Here, we review emerging empirical findings, many of which accord with TIM, and argue that future work must distinguish first impressions based on invariant facial features (e.g., shape) from those based on facial behaviours (e.g., expressions).

Parents reinforce the formation of first impressions in conversation with their children.

The tendency to form first impressions from facial appearance emerges early in development. One route through which these impressions may be learned is parent-child interaction. In Study 1, 24 parent-child dyads (children aged 5-6 years, 50% male, 83% White British) were given four computer generated faces and asked to talk about each of the characters shown. Study 2 (children aged 5-6 years, 50% male, 92% White British) followed a similar procedure using images of real faces. Across both studies, around 13% of conversation related to the perceived traits of the individuals depicted. Furthermore, parents actively reinforced their children's face-trait mappings, agreeing with the opinions they voiced on approximately 40% of occasions across both studies. Interestingly, although parents often encouraged face-trait mappings in their children, their responses to questionnaire items suggested they typically did not approve of judging others based on their appearance.

Young children learn first impressions of faces through social referencing.

Previous research has demonstrated that the tendency to form first impressions from facial appearance emerges early in development. We examined whether social referencing is one route through which these consistent first impressions are acquired. In Study 1, we show that 5- to 7-year-old children are more likely to choose a target face previously associated with positive non-verbal signals as more trustworthy than a face previously associated with negative non-verbal signals. In Study 2, we show that children generalise this learning to novel faces who resemble those who have previously been the recipients of positive non-verbal behaviour. Taken together, these data show one means through which individuals within a community could acquire consistent, and potentially inaccurate, first impressions of others faces. In doing so, they highlight a route through which cultural transmission of first impressions can occur.

Ritual and the origins of first impressions.

When encountering a stranger for the first time, adults spontaneously attribute to them a wide variety of character traits based solely on their physical appearance, most notably from their face. While these trait inferences exert a pervasive influence over our behaviour, their origins remain unclear. Whereas nativist accounts hold that first impressions are a product of gene-based natural selection, the Trait Inference Mapping framework (TIM) posits that we learn face-trait mappings ontogenetically as a result of correlated face-trait experience. Here, we examine the available anthropological evidence on ritual in order to better understand the mechanism by which first impressions from faces are acquired. Consistent with the TIM framework, we argue that examination of ritual body modification performed by communities around the world demonstrates far greater cross-cultural variability in face-trait mappings than currently appreciated. Furthermore, rituals of this type may be a powerful mechanism through which face-trait associations are transmitted from one generation to the next. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.