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Implicit Associations Between Appearance and Personality EJSP RESEARCH ARTICLE Personality in faces: Implicit associations between appearance and personality Alex L. Jones*, Jeremy J. Tree* & Robert Ward† * Swansea University, Swansea, UK † Bangor University, Bangor, UK Correspondence Abstract Robert Ward, School of Psychology; Bangor University, Brigantia Building, Penrallt Road, How accurate are the spontaneous trait inferences made to faces? Here we Bangor LL57 2AS, UK. measured implicit associations between facial appearance and personality E-mail: [email protected] traits, using faces conveying objective appearances of Extraversion and Agreeableness. In the standard or “uncrossed” conditions of Experiment 1, Received: 8 December 2017 we found that descriptions of high and low Agreeableness and Extraversion Accepted: 4 August 2018 were spontaneously and accurately associated with their objective trait appearance. In Experiment 2, to test the specificity of this effect, we https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2534 “crossed” the Implicit Association Tests, pairing faces conveying high and low Extraversion with words describing characteristics of high and low Conflict of Interest Statement Agreeableness, and the reverse. We found evidence for associations specific The authors declare that there are no to objective appearance of Agreeableness, and a general halo effect relating potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication to Extraversion. We conclude that spontaneous assessment of personality of this article. from faces can be accurate, and can be based on trait-specific as well as gen- eral visual cues. Data Archiving and Accessibility Statement Keywords: personality, accuracy, facial appearance, implicit cognition The raw data files and Python code to reproduce the dataset presented in the analyses of this paper is available on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/pwgkn). Judgments made on the basis of facial appearance can their personal traits, and the estimates of those traits as have important outcomes. Facial appearance made by observers. By this measure, many studies influences political decisions (Little, Burriss, Jones, & have found accurate trait inferences from facial Roberts, 2007), hiring decisions (Luxen & Van De appearance, for a diverse range of traits, including Vijver, 2006), and is correlated with military career sociosexuality (Boothroyd, Cross, Gray, Coombes, & progression (Mazur, Mazur, & Keating, 1984). Gregson-Curtis, 2011; Boothroyd, Jones, Burt, DeBru- Judgments of character from facial appearance show a ine, & Perrett, 2008), dominance (Quist, Watkins, high degree of agreement between observers (Kenny, Smith, DeBruine, & Jones, 2011), fighting ability (Lit- Albright, Malloy, & Kashy, 1994; Walker & Vetter, tle, Trebicky, Havlıcek, Roberts, & Kleisner, 2015), 2016), and even judgments made by children can trustworthiness (Tognetti, Berticat, Raymond, & Fau- agree with those made by adults (Cogsdill, Todorov, rie, 2013), political affiliation (Rule & Ambady, 2010), Spelke, & Banaji, 2014). We consider two questions and both physical (Jones, 2018) and mental health arising from the prevalence and importance of these issues (Ward & Scott, 2018), including depression judgments. First, how accurate are personality (Scott, Kramer, Jones, & Ward, 2013) and borderline inferences made simply on the basis of facial personality disorder (Daros, Ruocco, & Rule, 2016). appearance? Second, if these judgments are accurate, However, concerns have been raised about how to are they part of an ongoing and spontaneous process, interpret accuracy from facial appearance. In particu- or do they occur only upon explicit instruction? lar, Todorov and Porter (2014) have noted the impor- tance of image selection, and the possibility of confounding cues. For example, facial photos taken Can Personality Inference Based on Facial from a social networking site might reflect impression Appearance Be Accurate? management of the photo targets (Siibak, 2009), and publicity photos of politicians might be selected to con- Accuracy of first impressions is often measured by the vey messages about party affiliation (Olivola, Sussman, agreement between the self-report of targets about Tsetsos, Kang, & Todorov, 2012). A related point—and European Journal of Social Psychology 00 (2018) 1–12 ª 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1 Implicit associations for appearance A. L. Jones et al. anyone who has seen an unflattering photo of them- inference is limited to these kinds of deliberative condi- selves would surely agree—vagaries of lighting, pose, tions, or whether it might be better thought of as part and other factors mean different attributions can be of a spontaneous, involuntary process. To summarize given to different photographs of the same individual the position we develop below, we suggest the current (Todorov & Porter, 2014). A related set of concerns is literature does not yet answer this question. This is that a number of controllable cues, such as expression, because with limited exceptions, previous studies look- pose, clothing, and hairstyle are present in facial pho- ing at accuracy of trait inference from the face do not tos (Mazur, 2005), and these controllable cues can consider spontaneous judgments, and studies looking themselves provide information, which a target may at spontaneous inference do not consider accuracy. manipulate to produce both accurate and inaccurate Clearly observers make social judgments about impressions (Naumann, Vazire, Rentfrow, & Gosling, others, even when not instructed to do so (Uleman, 2009). The larger issue is, from the universe of possible 1987). This history of research is sometimes said to images that could be made of a face, we need to ask, demonstrate that trait inference is “automatic,” but it is how were the photos used as stimuli selected, and important to be clear about the meaning of this term. how might the selection affect interpretation? For example, some previous studies have claimed to Many studies investigating trait inference from facial demonstrate that social attributions to faces are made appearance therefore use highly constrained stimuli, in an “automatic” way, because inference occurs even typically in the form of well-lit, front-facing, neutral, after brief presentations (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; “passport” images, taken by the experimenters in con- Cogsdill et al., 2014; Rule, Ambady, & Hallett, 2009). trolled conditions, and with cues from expression, Indeed, multiple demonstrations show that attribu- pose, hairstyle, clothing, and cosmetics eliminated or tions to faces can be made from brief exposures of minimized. This is not to say that highly constrained approximately 50–100 ms (Borkenau et al., 2009; Oli- images represent a “ground truth” about appearance, vola & Todorov, 2010; Olson & Marshuetz, 2005; Rule but the constraints do allow for a replicable stimulus & Ambady, 2008; Rule et al., 2009; Willis & Todorov, creation procedure in which all images are selected 2006) and that unspeeded, deliberate contemplation of identically. We further consider issues of image selec- attributions produces similar results to instructions to tion in our discussion, but in any case, it is relevant make inferences on the basis of first impressions or gut that even with highly constrained face images, accu- feeling (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; Rule et al., 2009). rate inferences of Big Five personality traits (i.e., the However, “automatic” has multiple meanings with Five-Factor Model; FFM) can be drawn, including regard to cognitive processes (Bargh, 1989; Kahneman Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism (Jones, & Tresiman, 1984), with some of the key distinctions Kramer, & Ward, 2012; Kramer & Ward, 2010; Little & being made between rapid and slow; capacity-limited Perrett, 2007; Penton-Voak, Pound, Little, & Perrett, and capacity-free; and spontaneous and deliberative 2006). processes. For example, a process might be rapid, but A final point is that much of the work assessing trait made only under deliberate control. In the studies accuracy in faces has used trait composites, made by above, showing rapid inference, the explicit task for averaging the faces of individuals high or low on FFM participants was to report attributes of the faces pre- traits. Composite trait images might be referred to as a sented. These studies therefore do not show whether genuine or objective trait appearance: through averaging, accurate social inference from faces is “automatic” in statistical regularities in the appearance of people shar- the sense of being made spontaneously and without ing a trait would be preserved, while idiosyncrasies specific task instruction. would be minimized or removed. If there were no reg- Of course, there are many studies that do consider ularities in appearance, then composites images from spontaneous trait inference from facial appearance one trait extreme would not be reliably distinguishable (van Leeuwen & Macrae, 2004). We mentioned a few from composites made from the other extreme. How- at the start of our introduction (Little & Perrett, 2007; ever, personality accuracy has also been shown in Luxen & Van De Vijver, 2006), and there are many individual face images, under both unconstrained others (for review of spontaneous inference, see Ule- (Borkenau, Brecke, Mottig,€ & Paelecke, 2009) and man, Adil Saribay, & Gonzalez, 2008). However, as a constrained (Penton-Voak et al., 2006) presentations. general rule, previous studies on spontaneous infer- ence to appearance either do
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