Misleading First Impressions: Different for Different Facial Images of the Same Person

Alexander Todorov, Jenny M. Porter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

128 Scopus citations

Abstract

Studies on first impressions from facial appearance have rapidly proliferated in the past decade. Almost all of these studies have relied on a single face image per target individual, and differences in impressions have been interpreted as originating in stable physiognomic differences between individuals. Here we show that images of the same individual can lead to different impressions, with within-individual image variance comparable to or exceeding between-individuals variance for a variety of social judgments (Experiment 1). We further show that preferences for images shift as a function of the context (e.g., selecting an image for online dating vs. a political campaign; Experiment 2), that preferences are predictably biased by the selection of the images (e.g., an image fitting a political campaign vs. a randomly selected image; Experiment 3), and that these biases are evident after extremely brief (40-ms) presentation of the images (Experiment 4). We discuss the implications of these findings for studies on the accuracy of first impressions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1404-1417
Number of pages14
JournalPsychological Science
Volume25
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2014

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Psychology

Keywords

  • face perception
  • social perception

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