title: Facial first impressions from another angle: How social judgements are influenced by changeable and invariant facial properties.
abstract: First impressions made to photographs of faces can depend as much on momentary characteristics of the photographed image (within-person variability) as on consistent properties of the face of the person depicted (between-person variability). Here, we examine two important sources of within-person variability: emotional expression and viewpoint. We find more within-person variability than between-person variability for social impressions of key traits of trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness, which index the main dimensions in theoretical models of facial impressions. The most important source of this variability is the emotional expression of the face, but the viewpoint of the photograph also affects impressions and modulates the effects of expression. For example, faces look most trustworthy with a happy expression when they are facing the perceiver, compared to when they are facing elsewhere, whereas the opposite is true for anger and disgust. Our findings highlight the integration of these different sources of variability in social impression formation.
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia.
authors.forename: Clare A M
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Sutherland
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, North Yorkshire, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew W
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Young
authors.affiliation: ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia.
authors.forename: Gillian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rhodes
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: emotional expression; face perception; first impressions; person perception; social judgements; viewpoint