Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, and School of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QB United Kingdom; email:
Annu Rev Psychol. 2017 Jan 3;68:269-297. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-010416-044242.
As a highly social species, humans are equipped with a powerful tool for social communication-the face. Although seemingly simple, the human face can elicit multiple social perceptions due to the rich variations of its movements, morphology, and complexion. Consequently, identifying precisely what face information elicits different social perceptions is a complex empirical challenge that has largely remained beyond the reach of traditional methods. In the past decade, the emerging field of social psychophysics has developed new methods to address this challenge, with the potential to transfer psychophysical laws of social perception to the digital economy via avatars and social robots. At this exciting juncture, it is timely to review these new methodological developments. In this article, we introduce and review the foundational methodological developments of social psychophysics, present work done in the past decade that has advanced understanding of the face as a tool for social communication, and discuss the major challenges that lie ahead.
作为一种高度社会化的物种，人类拥有一种强大的社交沟通工具——面部。尽管看似简单，但由于面部运动、形态和肤色的丰富变化，人类的面部可以引发多种社交感知。因此，准确识别哪些面部信息会引发不同的社交感知是一个具有挑战性的经验问题，这在很大程度上超出了传统方法的范围。在过去的十年中，新兴的社会心理物理学领域开发了新的方法来应对这一挑战，有可能通过头像和社交机器人将社会感知的心理物理学定律应用于数字经济。在这个令人兴奋的时刻，及时回顾这些新的方法学发展是很有必要的。在本文中，我们介绍并回顾了社会心理物理学的基础方法学发展，展示了过去十年中在理解面部作为社交沟通工具方面的进展，并讨论了未来的主要挑战。
