Unconscious Evaluation of Faces on Social Dimensions

• Published in: Journal of experimental psychology. General Vol. 141; no. 4; pp. 715 - 727
• Main Authors: Stewart, Lorna H, Ajina, Sara, Getov, Spas, Bahrami, Bahador, Todorov, Alexander, Rees, Geraint
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-11-2012
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Amygdala - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognitive psychology; Consciousness; Consciousness States; Dominance; Evaluation; Experimental Psychology; Eye Movements; Face; Face Perception; Facial Expression; Facial Expressions; Fear; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Human Body; Humans; Judgment; Male; Neuropsychological Tests; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology; Power Structure; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social attribution, perception and cognition; Social Cognition; Social Dominance; Social Influences; Social Perception; Social psychology; Social sciences; Trust (Psychology); Trust (Social Behavior); Trusts; Unconscious (Psychology); Visual Perception; Visual Stimuli; Young Adult; Young Adults; Human; Evaluation; preconscious; Social perception; social; continuous flash suppression; Experimental study; Trust; Social cognition; Consciousness unconsciousness; dominance; Face; Social aspect
• ISSN: 0096-3445; 1939-2222
• DOI: 10.1037/a0027950

It has been proposed that two major axes, dominance and trustworthiness, characterize the social dimensions of face evaluation. Whether evaluation of faces on these social dimensions is restricted to conscious appraisal or happens at a preconscious level is unknown. Here we provide behavioral evidence that such preconscious evaluations exist and that they are likely to be interpretations arising from interactions between the face stimuli and observer-specific traits. Monocularly viewed faces that varied independently along two social dimensions of trust and dominance were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression (CFS) when a flashing pattern was presented to the other eye. Participants pressed a button as soon as they saw the face emerge from suppression to indicate whether the previously hidden face was located slightly to the left or right of central fixation. Dominant and untrustworthy faces took significantly longer time to emerge (T2E) compared with neutral faces. A control experiment showed these findings could not reflect delayed motor responses to conscious faces. Finally, we showed that participants' self-reported propensity to trust was strongly predictive of untrust avoidance (i.e., difference in T2E for untrustworthy vs neutral faces) as well as dominance avoidance (i.e., difference in T2E for dominant vs neutral faces). Dominance avoidance was also correlated with submissive behavior. We suggest that such prolongation of suppression for threatening faces may result from a passive fear response, leading to slowed visual perception. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)