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Face-trait inferences show robust child–adult agreement: Evidence from three types of faces

2015; Elsevier BV; Volume: 60; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jesp.2015.05.007

1096-0465

Emily Cogsdill, Mahzarin R. Banaji,

Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

Humans rapidly and automatically use facial appearance to attribute personality traits ("trustworthy," "competent"). To what extent is this face-to-trait attribution learned gradually across development versus early in childhood? Here, we demonstrate that child–adult concordance occurs even when faces should minimize agreement: natural (not computer-generated) adult faces; less developed children's faces; and perceptually unfamiliar monkey faces. In Study 1, 3- to 12-year-olds and adults selected "nice/mean" faces among pairs with a priori "nice-mean" ratings. Significant cross-age consensus emerged for all three face types. Study 2 replicated this result using an improved procedure in which 44–48 faces appeared in randomized pairs. This converging evidence supports the idea that complex forms of social cognition – allowing perceivers to believe they can derive personality from faces – emerge early in childhood, a finding that calls for new procedures to detect this central facet of cognition earlier in life.