Santos Isabel M, Young Andrew W
Departamento de Educacao, Universidade de Aveiro, Campus Universitario de Santiago, Aveiro, Portugal.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2011 Apr;64(4):751-66. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2010.519779. Epub 2010 Nov 17.
Two experiments investigated the role that different face regions play in a variety of social judgements that are commonly made from facial appearance (sex, age, distinctiveness, attractiveness, approachability, trustworthiness, and intelligence). These judgements lie along a continuum from those with a clear physical basis and high consequent accuracy (sex, age) to judgements that can achieve a degree of consensus between observers despite having little known validity (intelligence, trustworthiness). Results from Experiment 1 indicated that the face's internal features (eyes, nose, and mouth) provide information that is more useful for social inferences than the external features (hair, face shape, ears, and chin), especially when judging traits such as approachability and trustworthiness. Experiment 2 investigated how judgement agreement was affected when the upper head, eye, nose, or mouth regions were presented in isolation or when these regions were obscured. A different pattern of results emerged for different characteristics, indicating that different types of facial information are used in the various judgements. Moreover, the informativeness of a particular region/feature depends on whether it is presented alone or in the context of the whole face. These findings provide evidence for the importance of holistic processing in making social attributions from facial appearance.
两项实验探究了不同面部区域在基于面部外观做出的各种社会判断（性别、年龄、独特性、吸引力、亲和力、可信度和智力）中所起的作用。这些判断处于一个连续体上，一端是有明确生理基础且准确性较高的判断（性别、年龄），另一端是尽管有效性未知但观察者之间能达成一定共识的判断（智力、可信度）。实验1的结果表明，面部的内部特征（眼睛、鼻子和嘴巴）比外部特征（头发、脸型、耳朵和下巴）能提供更有助于社会推断的信息，尤其是在判断亲和力和可信度等特质时。实验2研究了单独呈现头部上部、眼睛、鼻子或嘴巴区域，或者这些区域被遮挡时，判断一致性是如何受到影响的。不同特征呈现出不同的结果模式，表明不同类型的面部信息在各种判断中被使用。此外，特定区域/特征的信息量取决于它是单独呈现还是在整个面部的背景中呈现。这些发现为在基于面部外观进行社会归因时整体加工的重要性提供了证据。
