Department of Social, Health, and Organisational Psychology, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1, 3584 CS, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
William James Center for Research, ISPA - Instituto Universitário, Rua Jardim do Tabaco n°34, 1149-041, Lisboa, Portugal.
Mem Cognit. 2022 Aug;50(6):1131-1146. doi: 10.3758/s13421-022-01316-z. Epub 2022 May 2.
Recognizing the role that facial appearance plays in guiding social interactions, here we investigated how occlusions of the bottom-face region affect facial impressions of trustworthiness and dominance. Previous studies suggesting that different facial features impact inferences on these traits sustain the hypothesis that wearing a face mask will differently affect each trait inference. And specifically, that trustworthiness impressions will be more disrupted by this type of face occlusion than dominance impressions. In two studies, we addressed this possibility by occluding the bottom face region of faces that were previously shown to convey different levels of dominance and trustworthiness, and tested differences in the ability to discriminate between these trait levels across occlusion conditions. In Study 1 faces were occluded by a mask, and in Study 2 by a square image. In both studies, results showed that although facial occlusions generally reduced participants' confidence on their trait judgments, the ability to discriminate facial trustworthiness was more strongly affected than the ability to discriminate facial dominance. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
认识到面部外观在引导社交互动中所扮演的角色，我们在这里研究了遮挡下半张脸区域如何影响对可信度和支配力的面部印象。先前的研究表明，不同的面部特征会影响对这些特征的推断，这支持了一个假设，即戴口罩会对每种特征推断产生不同的影响。具体来说，与支配力印象相比，可信度印象会受到这种类型的面部遮挡的更大干扰。在两项研究中，我们通过遮挡之前显示传达不同水平的支配力和可信度的面孔的下半张脸区域来解决这个问题，并测试了在遮挡条件下区分这些特征水平的能力的差异。在研究 1 中，面孔被口罩遮挡，在研究 2 中被正方形图像遮挡。在两项研究中，结果表明，尽管面部遮挡通常会降低参与者对其特征判断的信心，但区分面部可信度的能力受到的影响比区分面部支配力的能力更强。讨论了这些发现的实际和理论意义。
