Accuracy of Inferring Self- and Other-Preferences from Spontaneous Facial Expressions

Participants' faces were covertly recorded while they rated the attractiveness of people, the decorative appeal of paintings, and the cuteness of animals. Ratings employed a continuous scale. The same participants then returned and tried to guess ratings from 3-s videotapes of themselves and other targets. Performance was above chance in all three stimulus categories, thereby replicating the results of an earlier study (North et al. in J Exp Soc Psychol 46(6):1109-1113, 2010) but this time using a more sensitive rating procedure. Across conditions, accuracy in reading one's own face was not reliably better than other-accuracy. We discuss our findings in the context of "simulation" theories of face-based emotion recognition (Goldman in The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) and the larger body of accuracy research.