Ron Dotsch

Presentation and validation of the Radboud Faces Database

Many research fields concerned with the processing of information contained in human faces would benefit from face stimulus sets in which specific facial characteristics are systematically varied while other important picture characteristics are kept constant. Specifically, a face database in which displayed expressions, gaze direction, and head orientation are parametrically varied in a complete factorial design would be highly useful in many research domains. Furthermore, these stimuli should be standardised in several important, technical aspects. The present article presents the freely available Radboud Faces Database offering such a stimulus set, containing both Caucasian adult and children images. This face database is described both procedurally and in terms of content, and a validation study concerning its most important characteristics is presented. In the validation study, all frontal images were rated with respect to the shown facial expression, intensity of expression, clarity of expression, genuineness of expression, attractiveness, and valence. The results show very high recognition of the intended facial expressions.

Social Attributions from Faces: Determinants, Consequences, Accuracy, and Functional Significance

Since the early twentieth century, psychologists have known that there is consensus in attributing social and personality characteristics from facial appearance. Recent studies have shown that surprisingly little time and effort are needed to arrive at this consensus. Here we review recent research on social attributions from faces. Section I outlines data-driven methods capable of identifying the perceptual basis of consensus in social attributions from faces (e.g., What makes a face look threatening?). Section II describes nonperceptual determinants of social attributions (e.g., person knowledge and incidental associations). Section III discusses evidence that attributions from faces predict important social outcomes in diverse domains (e.g., investment decisions and leader selection). In Section IV, we argue that the diagnostic validity of these attributions has been greatly overstated in the literature. In the final section, we offer an account of the functional significance of these attributions.

Reverse Correlating Social Face Perception

Reverse correlation (RC) techniques provide a data-driven approach to model internal representations in an unconstrained way. Here, we used this approach to model social perception of faces. In the RC task, participants repeatedly selected from two face images—created by superimposing randomly generated noise masks on the same face—the face that looked most trustworthy (or, in other conditions: untrustworthy, dominant, or submissive). We calculated classification images (CIs) by averaging all selected images. Trait judgments of independent participants, as well as objective metrics, showed that the CIs visualized the intended traits well. Furthermore, tests of pixel clusters showed that diagnostic information resided mostly in mouth, eye, eyebrow, and hair regions. The current work shows that RC provides an excellent tool to extract psychologically meaningful images that map onto social perception.

Perspective taking eliminates differences in co-representation of out-group members’ actions

Coordinated action relies on shared representations between interaction partners: people co-represent actions of others in order to respond appropriately. However, little is known about the social factors that influence shared representations. We investigated whether actions performed by in-group and out-group members are represented differently, and if so, what role perspective-taking plays in this process. White participants performed a joint Simon task with an animated image of a hand with either white or black skin tone. Results of study I demonstrated that actions performed by in-group members were co-represented while actions of out-group members were not. In study II, it was found that participants co-represented actions of out-group members when they had read about an out-group member and to take his perspective prior to the actual experiment. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed.

The amygdala and FFA track both social and non-social face dimensions

The amygdala is thought to perform a number of social functions, and has received much attention for its role in processing social properties of faces. In particular, it has been shown to respond more to facial expressions than to neutral faces, and more to positively valenced and negatively valenced faces than faces in the middle of the continuum. However, when these findings are viewed in the context of a multidimensional face space, an important question emerges. Face space is a vector space where every face can be represented as a point in the space. The origin of the space represents the average face. In this context, positively valenced and negatively valenced faces are further away from the average face than faces in the middle of the continuum. It is therefore unclear if the amygdala response to positively valenced and negatively valenced faces is due to their social properties or to their general distance from the average face. Here, we compared the amygdala response to a set of faces that varied along two dimensions centered around the average face but differing in social content. In both the amygdala and much of the posterior face network, we observed a similar response to both dimensions, with stronger responses to the extremes of the dimensions than to faces near the average face. These findings suggest that the responses in these regions to socially relevant faces may be partially due to general distance from the average face.

Visualizing Minimal Ingroup and Outgroup Faces: Implications for Impressions, Attitudes, and Behavior

More than 40 years of research have shown that people favor members of their ingroup in their impressions, attitudes, and behaviors. Here, we propose that people also form different mental images of minimal ingroup and outgroup members, and we test the hypothesis that differences in these mental images contribute to the well-established biases that arise from minimal group categorization. In Study 1, participants were assigned to 1 of 2 groups using a classic minimal group paradigm. Next, a reverse correlation image classification procedure was used to create visual renderings of ingroup and outgroup face representations. Subsequently, a 2nd sample naive to the face generation stage rated these faces on a series of trait dimensions. The results indicated that the ingroup face was significantly more likely than the outgroup face to elicit favorable impressions (e.g., trusting, caring, intelligent, attractive). Extending this finding, Study 2 revealed that ingroup face representations elicited more favorable implicitly measured attitudes than did outgroup representations, and Study 3 showed that ingroup faces were trusted more than outgroup faces during an economic game. Finally, Study 4 demonstrated that facial physiognomy associated with trustworthiness more closely resembled the facial structure of the average ingroup than outgroup face representation. Together, these studies suggest that minimal group distinctions can elicit different mental representations, and that this visual bias is sufficient to elicit ingroup favoritism in impressions, attitudes and behaviors.

Social judgments from faces

People make rapid and consequential social judgments from minimal (non-emotional) facial cues. There has been rapid progress in identifying the perceptual basis of these judgments using data-driven, computational models. In contrast, our understanding of the neural underpinnings of these judgments is rather limited. Meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies find a wide range of seemingly inconsistent responses in the amygdala that co-vary with social judgments from faces. Guided by computational models of social judgments, these responses can be accounted by positing that the amygdala (and posterior face selective regions) tracks face typicality. Atypical faces, whether positively or negatively evaluated, elicit stronger responses in the amygdala. We conclude with the promise of data-driven methods for modeling neural responses to social judgments from faces.

Romantic relationship status biases memory of faces of attractive opposite-sex others : evidence from a reverse-correlation paradigm

Previous research has demonstrated that, presumably as a way to protect ones current romantic relationship, individuals involved in a heterosexual romantic relationship tend to give lower attractiveness ratings to attractive opposite-sex others as compared to uninvolved individuals (i.e., the derogation effect). The present study importantly extends this research by examining whether romantic relationship status actually biases memory for the facial appearance of attractive (vs. unattractive) mates. To address this issue, we used a reverse-correlation technique (Mangini & Biederman, 2004), originally developed to get a visual approximation of an individuals internal representation of a target category or person. In line with the derogation effect, results demonstrated that romantically involved (vs. uninvolved) individuals indeed held a less attractive memory of a previously encountered attractive mates face. Interestingly, they also held a more attractive memory of an unattractive mates face as compared to uninvolved individuals. This latter finding may suggest that romantically involved (as compared to uninvolved) individuals differentiate opposite-sex others along the attractiveness dimension less.

The ABC of stereotypes about groups: Agency/socioeconomic success, conservative–progressive beliefs, and communion.

Previous research argued that stereotypes differ primarily on the 2 dimensions of warmth/communion and competence/agency. We identify an empirical gap in support for this notion. The theoretical model constrains stereotypes a priori to these 2 dimensions; without this constraint, participants might spontaneously employ other relevant dimensions. We fill this gap by complementing the existing theory-driven approaches with a data-driven approach that allows an estimation of the spontaneously employed dimensions of stereotyping. Seven studies (total N = 4,451) show that people organize social groups primarily based on their agency/socioeconomic success (A), and as a second dimension, based on their conservative-progressive beliefs (B). Communion (C) is not found as a dimension by its own, but rather as an emergent quality in the two-dimensional space of A and B, resulting in a 2D ABC model of stereotype content about social groups. (PsycINFO Database Record

Social anxiety predicts avoidance behaviour in virtual encounters

Avoidant behaviour is critical in social anxiety and social phobia, being a major factor in the maintenance of anxiety. However, almost all previous studies of social avoidance were restricted to using self-reports for the study of intentional aspects of avoidance. In contrast, the current study used immersive virtual reality technology to measure interpersonal distance as an index of avoidance, an unintentional behavioural indicator. In a virtual supermarket, twenty-three female participants differing in social anxiety approached computer-generated persons (avatars) under the pretext of a cover story. During the task, different aspects of approach and avoidance were measured. The results confirmed the hypotheses: The more anxious participants were, the more slowly they approached the avatars, and the larger the distance they kept from the avatars. This indicates that even sub-phobic social anxiety is related to unintentional avoidance behaviour in social situations.