title: Similarities and differences in Chinese and Caucasian adults' use of facial cues for trustworthiness judgments.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  All cultural groups in the world place paramount value on interpersonal trust. Existing research suggests that although accurate judgments of another's trustworthiness require extensive interactions with the person, we often make trustworthiness judgments based on facial cues on the first encounter. However, little is known about what facial cues are used for such judgments and what the bases are on which individuals make their trustworthiness judgments.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that individuals may use facial attractiveness cues as a "shortcut" for judging another's trustworthiness due to the lack of other more informative and in-depth information about trustworthiness. Using data-driven statistical models of 3D Caucasian faces, we compared facial cues used for judging the trustworthiness of Caucasian faces by Caucasian participants who were highly experienced with Caucasian faces, and the facial cues used by Chinese participants who were unfamiliar with Caucasian faces. We found that Chinese and Caucasian participants used similar facial cues to judge trustworthiness. Also, both Chinese and Caucasian participants used almost identical facial cues for judging trustworthiness and attractiveness.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results suggest that without opportunities to interact with another person extensively, we use the less racially specific and more universal attractiveness cues as a "shortcut" for trustworthiness judgments.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China. fenxu@zstu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Fen
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Dingcheng
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Rie
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Toriyama
authors.forename: Fengling
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Shoji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Itakura
authors.forename: Kang
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D044466:Asian People; D003463:Cues; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D012938:Social Perception; D035502:Trust; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult