The effect of approach and avoidance motivation on self-perception.

This work addresses the link between motivation and self-perception by systematically studying visual self-representations. We propose that the way individuals perceive themselves may be associated with dispositional and situationally induced approach and avoidance motivation. First, we investigate how dispositional differences in approach/avoidance motivation and self-esteem relate to self-perception. Second, we investigate how state differences in approach/avoidance motivation relate to self-perception. Based on motivation literature, we predicted that self-perception would reflect psychological equanimity at the dispositional level (seeing the self in a favorable light), and motivational flexibility at the situational level (situational avoidance motivation results in a more realistic view of one's qualities). We use up-to-date face modeling methods to measure individuals' self-perceptions in a systematic, nuanced, and implicit way: Participants are repeatedly asked to indicate which of two portrait versions better represents themselves. Then we relate distortions in self-perceptions to agency and communion dimensions. We demonstrate that (1) participants low in self-esteem show more communion enhancement than participants high in self-esteem; (2) participants in an avoidance state show less agency enhancement (i.e., more realistic self-perceptions) than participants in an approach state. This research is first to demonstrate regularities in visual self-perception that are linked to approach and avoidance motivation.

Oxytocin has sex-specific effects on trust and underlying neurophysiological processes.

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) regulates mammalian social approach behavior across sexes. Yet most OT studies in humans exclusively investigated men. Here, we studied sex differences in OT's effects on human trust behavior in 144 heterosexual participants (73 women, 71 men). Participants received 24 international units of intranasal OT or placebo treatment and played a trust game in the role of the investor while undergoing electroencephalography. Trustees were represented by photos of the other sex gradually varying in their pre-rated intensities of facial features signaling attractiveness and threat. On a behavioral level, we observed that OT increased trust in men and reduced it in women when trustees showed weak signals of attractiveness and threat. Correspondingly, on the neurophysiological level, we noted that OT intensified the P100 in male participants, but dampened it in female ones. Our findings demonstrate OT's sex- and context-specific effects on social approach behavior and an underlying early visual attention-related brain process. This evidence demonstrates the need to consider psychobiological mechanisms of sexual dimorphism in human OT research.

Facial threat affects trust more strongly than facial attractiveness in women than it does in men.

Trust is essential in initiating social relationships. Due to the differential evolution of sex hormones as well as the fitness burdens of producing offspring, evaluations of a potential mating partner's trustworthiness likely differ across sexes. Here, we explore unknown sex-specific effects of facial attractiveness and threat on trusting other-sex individuals. Ninety-three participants (singles; 46 women) attracted by the other sex performed an incentivized trust game. They had to decide whether to trust individuals of the other sex represented by a priori-created face stimuli gradually varying in the intensities of both attractiveness and threat. Male and female participants trusted attractive and unthreatening-looking individuals more often. However, whereas male participants' trust behavior was affected equally by attractiveness and threat, female participants' trust behavior was more strongly affected by threat than by attractiveness. This indicates that a partner's high facial attractiveness might compensate for high facial threat in male but not female participants. Our findings suggest that men and women prioritize attractiveness and threat differentially, with women paying relatively more attention to threat cues inversely signaling parental investment than to attractiveness cues signaling reproductive fitness. This difference might be attributable to an evolutionary, biologically sex-specific decision regarding parental investment and reproduction behavior.

Person knowledge shapes face identity perception.

Recognition of others' identity through facial features is essential in life. Using both correlational and experimental approaches, we examined how person knowledge biases the perception of others' facial identity. When a participant believed any two individuals were more similar in personality, their faces were perceived to be correspondingly more similar (assessed via mousetracking, Study 1). Further, participants' facial representations of target individuals that were believed to have a more similar personality were found to have a greater physical resemblance (assessed via reverse-correlation, Studies 2 and 3). Finally, when participants learned about novel individuals who had a more similar personality, their faces were visually represented more similarly (Study 4). Together, the findings show that the perception of facial identity is driven not only by facial features but also the person knowledge we have learned about others, biasing it toward alternate identities despite the fact that those identities lack any physical resemblance.

Who gets ostracized? A personality perspective on risk and protective factors of ostracism.

Ostracism, excluding and ignoring others, results from a variety of factors. Here, we investigate the effect of personality on the likelihood of becoming a target of ostracism. Theorizing that individuals low in conscientiousness or agreeableness are at risk of getting ostracized, we tested our hypotheses within 5 preregistered studies: Four experiments investigating participants' willingness to ostracize targets characterized by different personality traits and a reverse correlation face modeling study where we determined and subsequently validated the stereotypical face of an ostracized person. A survey study within a representative German data panel further corroborated our findings. In line with our hypotheses, persons low in conscientiousness or agreeableness provoke more ostracism intentions (Studies 1, 2, and 4), are more likely to be actually ostracized by others (Study 3), represent the stereotype of an "ostracizable" person (Study 5), and report experiencing more ostracism (Study 6). Effects remained stable even after controlling for likability of the target (Study 2 and 4). Moreover, being described as negative on 1 personality dimension could not be compensated by being described as positive on the other (Study 4). In exploratory analyses, we further investigated the effects of openness to experience, neuroticism, and extraversion. In sum, we find evidence that personality affects the likelihood of becoming a target of ostracism, and that especially low agreeableness and conscientiousness represent risk factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Beyond attractiveness: A multimethod approach to study enhancement in self-recognition on the Big Two personality dimensions.

Self-enhancement refers to the phenomenon that individuals tend to have unrealistically positive self-views. Traditional measures of self-enhancement typically imply self-evaluations and reference values, such as evaluations by others or evaluations of the average other. Comparing individuals' self-evaluations with such reference values, however, bears risks. It is not evident that the reference values are more accurate than the self-evaluations and it is not possible to distinguish self-enhancers from individuals who are indeed superior to others. Here, we present two novel methods to measure self-enhancement that circumvent these problems by using participants' own faces as reference values. In Study 1 we systematically manipulate facial characteristics that have previously been found to impact perceptions of attractiveness, likability, and the Big Two personality dimensions in participants' faces and ask them to recognize themselves. In Study 2 we use a novel approach to apply random noise patterns to participants' faces and ask them to indicate in which version they recognize themselves more. Aggregating these random noise patterns reveals the direction of self-recognition in a more bottom-up, data-driven way. Across both studies we find evidence for self-enhancement regarding attractiveness, likability, and the Big Two personality dimensions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The conceptual structure of face impressions.

Humans seamlessly infer the expanse of personality traits from others' facial appearance. These facial impressions are highly intercorrelated within a structure known as "face trait space." Research has extensively documented the facial features that underlie face impressions, thus outlining a bottom-up fixed architecture of face impressions, which cannot account for important ways impressions vary across perceivers. Classic theory in impression formation emphasized that perceivers use their lay conceptual beliefs about how personality traits correlate to form initial trait impressions, for instance, where trustworthiness of a target may inform impressions of their intelligence to the extent one believes the two traits are related. This considered, we explore the possibility that this lay "conceptual trait space"-how perceivers believe personality traits correlate in others-plays a role in face impressions, tethering face impressions to one another, thus shaping face trait space. In study 1, we found that conceptual and face trait space explain considerable variance in each other. In study 2, we found that participants with stronger conceptual associations between two traits judged those traits more similarly in faces. Importantly, using a face image classification task, we found in study 3 that participants with stronger conceptual associations between two traits used more similar facial features to make those two face trait impressions. Together, these findings suggest lay beliefs of how personality traits correlate may underlie trait impressions, and thus face trait space. This implies face impressions are not only derived bottom up from facial features, but also shaped by our conceptual beliefs.

The Basel Face Database: A validated set of photographs reflecting systematic differences in Big Two and Big Five personality dimensions.

Upon a first encounter, individuals spontaneously associate faces with certain personality dimensions. Such first impressions can strongly impact judgments and decisions and may prove highly consequential. Researchers investigating the impact of facial information often rely on (a) real photographs that have been selected to vary on the dimension of interest, (b) morphed photographs, or (c) computer-generated faces (avatars). All three approaches have distinct advantages. Here we present the Basel Face Database, which combines these advantages. In particular, the Basel Face Database consists of real photographs that are subtly, but systematically manipulated to show variations in the perception of the Big Two and the Big Five personality dimensions. To this end, the information specific to each psychological dimension is isolated and modeled in new photographs. Two studies serve as systematic validation of the Basel Face Database. The Basel Face Database opens a new pathway for researchers across psychological disciplines to investigate effects of perceived personality.

Caring or daring? Exploring the impact of facial masculinity/femininity and gender category information on first impressions.

In two studies we disentangled and systematically investigated the impact of subtle facial cues to masculinity/femininity and gender category information on first impressions. Participants judged the same unambiguously male and female target persons-either with masculine or feminine facial features slightly enhanced-regarding stereotypically masculine (i.e., competence) and feminine (i.e., warmth) personality traits. Results of both studies showed a strong effect of facial masculinity/femininity: Masculine-looking persons were seen as colder and more competent than feminine-looking persons. This effect of facial masculinity/femininity was not only found for typical (i.e., masculine-looking men and feminine-looking women) and atypical (i.e., masculine-looking women and feminine-looking men) category members; it was even found to be more pronounced for atypical than for typical category members. This finding reveals that comparing atypical members to the group prototype results in pronounced effects of facial masculinity/femininity. These contrast effects for atypical members predominate assimilation effects for typical members. Intriguingly, very subtle facial cues to masculinity/femininity strongly guide first impressions and may have more impact than the gender category.

Modelling perceptions of criminality and remorse from faces using a data-driven computational approach.

Perceptions of criminality and remorse are critical for legal decision-making. While faces perceived as criminal are more likely to be selected in police lineups and to receive guilty verdicts, faces perceived as remorseful are more likely to receive less severe punishment recommendations. To identify the information that makes a face appear criminal and/or remorseful, we successfully used two different data-driven computational approaches that led to convergent findings: one relying on the use of computer-generated faces, and the other on photographs of people. In addition to visualising and validating the perceived looks of criminality and remorse, we report correlations with earlier face models of dominance, threat, trustworthiness, masculinity/femininity, and sadness. The new face models of criminal and remorseful appearance contribute to our understanding of perceived criminality and remorse. They can be used to study the effects of perceived criminality and remorse on decision-making; research that can ultimately inform legal policies.

Changing the personality of a face: Perceived Big Two and Big Five personality factors modeled in real photographs.

General, spontaneous evaluations of strangers based on their faces have been shown to reflect judgments of these persons' intention and ability to harm. These evaluations can be mapped onto a 2D space defined by the dimensions trustworthiness (intention) and dominance (ability). Here we go beyond general evaluations and focus on more specific personality judgments derived from the Big Two and Big Five personality concepts. In particular, we investigate whether Big Two/Big Five personality judgments can be mapped onto the 2D space defined by the dimensions trustworthiness and dominance. Results indicate that judgments of the Big Two personality dimensions almost perfectly map onto the 2D space. In contrast, at least 3 of the Big Five dimensions (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness) go beyond the 2D space, indicating that additional dimensions are necessary to describe more specific face-based personality judgments accurately. Building on this evidence, we model the Big Two/Big Five personality dimensions in real facial photographs. Results from 2 validation studies show that the Big Two/Big Five are perceived reliably across different samples of faces and participants. Moreover, results reveal that participants differentiate reliably between the different Big Two/Big Five dimensions. Importantly, this high level of agreement and differentiation in personality judgments from faces likely creates a subjective reality which may have serious consequences for those being perceived-notably, these consequences ensue because the subjective reality is socially shared, irrespective of the judgments' validity. The methodological approach introduced here might prove useful in various psychological disciplines. (PsycINFO Database Record

Portraits made to measure: manipulating social judgments about individuals with a statistical face model.

The social judgments people make on the basis of the facial appearance of strangers strongly affect their behavior in different contexts. However, almost nothing is known about the physical information underlying these judgments. In this article, we present a new technology (a) to quantify the information in faces that is used for social judgments and (b) to manipulate the image of a human face in a way which is almost imperceptible but changes the personality traits ascribed to the depicted person. This method was developed in a high-dimensional face space by identifying vectors that capture maximum variability in judgments of personality traits. Our method of manipulating the salience of these vectors in faces was successfully transferred to novel photographs from an independent database. We evaluated this method by showing pairs of face photographs which differed only in the salience of one of six personality traits. Subjects were asked to decide which face was more extreme with respect to the trait in question. Results show that the image manipulation produced the intended attribution effect. All response accuracies were significantly above chance level. This approach to understanding and manipulating how a person is socially perceived could be useful in psychological research and could also be applied in advertising or the film industries.