Face Masks Bolsters the Characteristics From Looking at a Face Even When Facial Expressions Are Impaired

Face masks impact social interactions because emotion recognition is difficult due to face occlusion. However, is this enough to conclude that face masks negatively impact social interactions? We investigated the impact of face masks on invariant characteristics (sex, age), trait-like characteristics (trustworthiness, attractiveness, and approachability), and emotional expressions (happiness and excitability). Participants completed an online survey and rated masked and no-masked faces. The same face remained masked or no-masked throughout the survey. Results revealed that, when compared to no-masked faces, masked happy faces appeared less happy. Face masks did not negatively impact the ratings of other characteristics. Participants were better at judging the sex of masked faces. Masked faces also appeared younger, more trustworthy, more attractive, and more approachable. Therefore, face masks did not always result in unfavorable ratings. An additional post hoc modeling revealed that trustworthiness and attractiveness ratings for masked faces predicted the same trait ratings for no-masked faces. However, approachability ratings for no-masked faces predicted the same trait ratings for masked faces. This hinted that information from masked/no-masked faces, such as from the eye and eye region, could aid in the understanding of others during social interaction. Future directions were proposed to expand the research.

Temporal self-compression: Behavioral and neural evidence that past and future selves are compressed as they move away from the present

A basic principle of perception is that as objects increase in distance from an observer, they also become logarithmically compressed in perception (i.e., not differentiated from one another), making them hard to distinguish. Could this basic principle apply to perhaps our most meaningful mental representation: our own sense of self? Here, we report four studies that suggest selves are increasingly non-discriminable with temporal distance from the present as well. In Studies 1 through 3, participants made trait ratings across various time points in the past and future. We found that participants compressed their past and future selves, relative to their present self. This effect was preferential to the self and could not be explained by the alternative possibility that individuals simply perceive arbitrary self-change with time irrespective of temporal distance. In Study 4, we tested for neural evidence of temporal self-compression by having participants complete trait ratings across time points while undergoing functional MRI. Representational similarity analysis was used to determine whether neural self-representations are compressed with temporal distance as well. We found evidence of temporal self-compression in areas of the default network, including medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Specifically, neural pattern similarity between self-representations was logarithmically compressed with temporal distance. Taken together, these findings reveal a “temporal self-compression” effect, with temporal selves becoming increasingly non-discriminable with distance from the present.

Temporal Self-Compression: Behavioral and neural evidence that past and future selves are compressed as they move away from the present

Although it is well-known that people feel disconnected from their past and future selves, the underlying mechanism supporting this phenomenon is unknown. To help fill this gap, we considered a basic principle of perception. As objects increase in distance from an observer, they also become logarithmically compressed in perception (i.e., not differentiated from one another), making them hard to distinguish. Here, we report four studies that suggest we may feel disconnected from distant selves, in part, because they are increasingly indiscriminable with temporal distance from the present self. In Studies 1-3, participants made trait ratings across various time points in the past and future. We found that participants compressed their past and future selves, relative to their present self. This effect was preferential to the self and could not be explained by the alternative possibility that individuals simply perceive arbitrary self-change with time irrespective of temporal distance. In Study 4, we tested for neural evidence of temporal self-compression by having participants complete trait ratings across time points while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Representational similarity analysis (RSA) was used to determine if neural self-representations are compressed with temporal distance, as well. We found evidence of temporal self-compression in areas of the default network, including medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Specifically, neural pattern similarity between self-representations was logarithmically compressed with temporal distance. Taken together, these findings reveal a “temporal self-compression” effect, with temporal selves becoming increasingly indiscriminable with distance from the present.Significance StatementFor centuries, great thinkers have struggled to understand why we feel disconnected from our past and future selves. Insight may come from a basic principle of perception: as objects become distant, they also become less discriminable, or ‘compressed.’ In Studies 1-3, we demonstrate that people’s ratings of their own personality become increasingly less differentiated as they consider more distant past and future selves. In Study 4, we found neural evidence that the brain compresses self-representations with time, as well. When we peer out a window, objects close to us are in clear view whereas distant objects are hard to tell apart. We provide novel evidence that self-perception may operate similarly, with the nuance of distant selves increasingly harder to perceive.

Lay Theories of Heroism and Leadership

Whereas leadership is generally perceived as a masculine enterprise, heroism research suggests that people view heroes as similarly masculine, but having more feminine traits. We predicted that heroes will be evaluated higher than leaders in communion but not differ in agency. In Study 1, heroes were perceived to have higher communion and similarly high agency as leaders. In Studies 2 and 3, we replicated these trait ratings focusing on perceptions of typical heroes/leaders (S2) and personal heroes/leaders (S3). In Study 4, we showed that the greater level of communion associated with heroes is independent of their gender. In Study 5, using an implicit association test, we showed there is a stronger implicit association of communion with heroes than leaders.

Perceived Femininity and Masculinity Contribute Independently to Facial Impressions

In person perception research, femininity and masculinity are regularly conceived as two ends of one bipolar dimension. This unidimensional understanding permeates work on facial impressions, gender diagnosticity, and perceptions of LGBTQ individuals—but, it is perhaps most prominent in evolutionary work suggesting that sexually dimorphic facial features (which vary along a female–male continuum) correspond directly with subjective ratings of femininity and masculinity, which in turn predict ratings of traits such as attractiveness. In this paper, we analyze two large face databases (the Chicago and Bogazici Face Databases) to demonstrate that femininity and masculinity are distinct dimensions in person perception. We also evaluate key theoretical assumptions surrounding femininity and masculinity in evolutionary theories of face perception. We find that sexually dimorphic features weakly correlate with each other and typically explain just 10-20% of variance in subjective ratings of femininity and masculinity. Femininity and masculinity each explain unique variance in trait ratings of attractiveness, dominance, trustworthiness, and threat. Femininity and masculinity also interact to explain unique variance in these traits, revealing facial androgyny as a novel phenomenon. We propose a new theoretical model explaining the link between biology, facial features, perceived femininity and masculinity, and trait ratings. Our findings broadly suggest that concepts that are “opposites” semantically cannot necessarily be assumed to be psychological opposites.

Trait evaluations of faces and voices: Comparing within- and between-person variability

The human face and voice are rich sources of information that can vary in many different ways. Most of the literature on face/voice perception has focussed on understanding how people look and sound different to each other (between-person variability). However, recent studies highlight the ways in which the same person can look and sound different on different occasions (within-person variability). Here, in a series of three experiments, we aimed to establish how within- and between-person variability relate to one another in the context of social trait impressions by collecting social trait ratings attributed to multiple different face images and voice recordings of the same people. We find that within-person variability in social trait evaluations is at least as great as between-person variability. Using different stimulus sets in each experiment, we consistently find that trait impressions of voices are more variable within people than between people – a pattern that is only evident occasionally when judging faces. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding within-person variability, showing how judgements of the same person can vary widely on different encounters, and quantifying how this pattern differs for the perception of voices and faces.

How does familiarity with a person affect trait ratings?

From only a single spoken word, listeners can form a wealth of first impressions of a person’s character traits and personality based on their voice. However, due to the substantial within-person variability in voices, these trait judgements are likely to be highly stimulus-dependent for unfamiliar voices: the same person may sound very trustworthy in one recording but less trustworthy in another. How trait judgements may change when listeners are familiar with a voice is unclear: Are listeners who are familiar with the voices as susceptible to the effects of within-person variability? Does the semantic knowledge listeners have about a familiar person influence their judgements? In the current study, we aimed to empirically test the effect of familiarity on listeners’ trait judgements from variable voices, by tracking how first impressions may differ from second (or “lasting”) impressions. For this purpose, we conducted a series of 3 experiments in which we contrasted trait judgments for listeners who were familiar with a set of voices – either through lab-based training or through watching a TV show – with listeners who were unfamiliar with the voices. We predicted that familiarity would reduce variability in trait judgements for variable voice recordings from the same identity (cf. Mileva, Kramer & Burton, 2019 for faces). However, across the 3 studies and two types of measures to assess variability, we found no compelling evidence to suggest that trait impressions were systematically affected by familiarity.

Trait Ratings for the Radboud Faces Database

Since its publication, the Radboud Faces Database (RaFD; Langner et al., 2010) has become one of the most widely used face databases. At the time of writing, it has been cited more than 1,400 times. The database includes validation data such as rated genuineness, clarity, and intensity of the displayed facial expression. Ratings of models’ attractiveness based on their neutral, frontal gaze image is also available and age data for most models can be found at http://gijsbijlstra.nl/rafd-ratings/. These ratings are useful for researchers who want to (a) select models who score particularly low or high on a certain characteristic, (b) ensure that different image sets do not significantly differ on certain characteristics, or (c) control for these characteristics in statistical analyses. Here, additional trait ratings for all 39 models of the RaFD’s Caucasian Adult Subset (neutral expression, frontal gaze) are presented. The models were rated on 19 trait dimensions: trustworthiness, dominance, attractiveness, competence, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, aggressiveness, friendliness, health, intelligence, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise.