The facial features that people rate as more trustworthy might surprise you.
While people often expect the most attractive people to inspire the most trust in others, this isn’t the case.
Average-looking faces are considered most trustworthy, psychological research finds.
The reason may be down to the ‘typicality’ of an average-looking face.
Dr Carmel Sofer, who led the research, said:
“Face typicality likely indicates familiarity and cultural affiliation — as such, these findings have important implications for understanding social perception, including cross-cultural perceptions and interactions.”
As people’s faces get more distinctive — irrespective of whether it is more or less attractive — it gets less trustworthy.
Dr Sofer said:
“Although face typicality did not matter for attractiveness judgments, it mattered a great deal for trustworthiness judgments.
This effect may have been overlooked, because trustworthiness and attractiveness judgments are generally highly correlated in research.”
The study’s authors write:
“By showing the influence of face typicality on perceived trustworthiness, our findings cast a new light on how face typicality influences social perception.
They highlight the social meaning of the typical face because trustworthiness judgments approximate the general evaluation of faces.”
Dr Sofer said:
“We are interested in how people judge face trustworthiness when visiting other countries and how the locals perceive the visitors.
In addition, we plan to study how face typicality influences trustworthiness judgments, when other factors such as emotional expressions are present.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Sofer et al., 2014).
