Inferring Character From Faces: A Developmental Study
The text below is from Cogsdill et al. (2014), formatted using R version 4.5.1 (2025-06-13) (“Great Square Root”).
Abstract
Human adults attribute character traits to faces readily and with high consensus. In two experiments investigating the development of face-to-trait inference, adults and children ages 3 through 10 attributed trustworthiness, dominance, and competence to pairs of faces. In Experiment 1, the attributions of 3- to 4-year-olds converged with those of adults, and 5- to 6-year-olds’ attributions were at adult levels of consistency. Children ages 3 and above consistently attributed the basic mean/nice evaluation not only to faces varying in trustworthiness (Experiment 1) but also to faces varying in dominance and competence (Experiment 2). This research suggests that the predisposition to judge others using scant facial information appears in adultlike forms early in childhood and does not require prolonged social experience.
Introduction
General Method
Participants viewed computer-generated faces selected to be high or low on perceived trustworthiness, dominance, or competence. These extensively validated (Todorov et al. 2013) faces were created in FaceGen Modeller 3.2 (Singular Inversions, www.facegen.com) and based on data-driven, computational models (derived from adults’ judgments) of the respective traits Todorov and Oosterhof (2011). In our experiments, we used three sets of faces, each of which included six distinct face identities. Each set contained three faces that are perceived as high (3 SD above the average face) and three faces that are perceived as low (3 SD below the average face) on a given trait (trustworthiness, dominance, or competence; see Figure 1).
