1 Introduction.
Face perception is critical to human social interaction (Little, Jones & DeBruine, 2011a) where on a daily basis individuals’ make thousands of personality trait judgements based on their immediate evaluations derived from a person’s appearance. Humans are admonished to not ‘judge a book by its cover’, however, it may be that subconsciously we automatically create assumptions about others from their appearance (Snyder & Lopez, 2001).
How we evaluate others based on their facial features can determine critical outcomes in our life, including mating choices; hiring decisions; platonic relationships (Little, Jones & DeBruine, 2011b); US congressional (Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren & Hall, 2005); gubernatorial elections (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; Hall, Goren, Chaiken & Todorov, 2009); criminal justice decisions (Cannon, 2012) and may social outcomes (Blair, Judd & Chapleau, 2004; Hassin & Trope, 2000; Langlois et al., 2000), as they influence how we make decisions about others and how others may make decisions about ourselves. Mating choices may be one of the most important outcomes, as individuals are more likely to want to combine their genes with these mating choices. Immediate evaluations of others facial features could be a result of an evolutionary aspect, where mating choices are judged by the individual to maximize the reproductive quality of fitness, health, fertility, intelligence and status (Miller & Todd, 1998). A further explanation may be a result of the term ‘survival of the fittest’ originated from the Darwinian evolutionary theory (Darwin, 1950) which implies that those species that hold the useful adaptations to their environment are more likely to be successful in survival and reproduction, as it is believed that these genes are better adapted to the immediate environment (Gould, 2009). Although modern-day researchers avoid the term, as the word ‘fittest’ is criticized as it is often confused with physical fitness rather than the rate of reproduction output among a class of genetic variants (Colby, 1996). Conversely, those with genes that are deemed less fit have a lesser propensity towards successful survival and reproduction.
Additionally, previous research has suggested that these choices are influenced by the attractiveness of faces, as it was found that attractive people have a higher quantity of dates than less attractive people (Riggio & Woll, 1984). Do attractive faces influence specific evaluations us humans form about others? Previous research has found that individuals who are perceived as more attractive are more likely to be hired for a job during a study using mock interviews (Cash & Kilcullen, 1985) and criminal justice decisions, wherein more recent research found that attractive stalkers received lower ratings of guilt than an unattractive stalker (Cannon, 2012). Thus, it can be clearly shown that the attractiveness of others can strongly influence certain decisions and outcomes in life events.
Individuals have various preferences when perceiving an attractive face, raising the question of what makes an attractive face? Previous research reviewed a number of facial features such as symmetry (Rhodes, Sumich & Byatt, 1999), sexually dimorphic shape cues (Perrett, May & Yoshikawa, 1994; Rhodes, 2006), averageness (Langlois & Roggman, 1990) skin colour/texture and cues to personality that influence attractiveness judgements (Little, Jones & DeBruine, 2012). The findings led to the conclusion that the judgement of attractiveness stemmed from individual differences in preferences for traits that will prove to be adaptive. Additionally, these findings are consistent with the evolutionary theory mentioned previously, which suggests that evaluations of some facial features are innately derived from a representation of what traits they expect their partner to have and provide the best chance of their genes surviving, whereas other preferences are influenced by experiences throughout life.
Naturally, us humans associate good facial features which includes symmetry, average, and the level of masculinity/femininity appropriate to the sex of the face (Griffey & Little, 2013) with good socially desirable personality traits such as being more sociable, interesting, sensitive, nurturing and kind than unattractive individuals (Dion, Berscheid & Walster, 1972). These associations humans make linking good facial features with good traits can be explained by the ‘Halo effect’ which can be defined as the “familiar tendency to judge all aspects of a person’s behaviour or character on the basis of a single attribute” (Schultz & Schultz, 2015). The Halo effect can potentially be used to give an explanation to why we naturally associate rating a person positively in one dimension usually tends us to rate them positively in another dimension.
Trustworthiness has shown to be one personality trait that is crucial for human survival when evaluating others (Cosmides & Tooby 2000), as those who are deemed trustworthy are thought to be less likely to lie, appear more ethical, more attractive and happier (Rotter, 1980). Additionally, this trait judgement is seen as the best approximation of general valence evaluation of faces (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008), compared to other characteristics such as cooperativeness, attractiveness and intelligence (Cotrell, Neuberg & Li, 2007). It is further suggested to provide immediate signals whether an individual should be approached, avoided, trusted or distrusted (van’t Wout & Sanfey, 2008), as we humans naturally link trusting untrustworthy people to negative outcomes, thus attempting to avoid this (Bzdok et al, 2011). These findings could be an explanation of the halo effect, previously mentioned, in play, as individuals associate one positive evaluation to automatically creating a positive bias judgement of their personality characteristics. These positive bias judgements can include higher life success, attractiveness and personality ratings (Wade & DiMaria, 2003).
Although trait judgements made from facial features are made automatically and rapid (Todorov et al, 2005), with exposure of 100ms (Ballew & Todorov, 2007) it was found that individuals judge trustworthiness quicker than other personality judgements (Willis & Todorov, 2006), which may stem from the human importance of trustworthiness judgements. Conversely, research findings have found that these trustworthiness/valence judgements can actually be made as automatic and immediate as 33ms from facial appearances but judgements don’t improve with an exposure longer than 167ms (Todorov, Pakrashi & Oosterhof, 2009). This can be supported by the findings of Willis & Todorov (2006) where it was found that when exposure time of facial features increased from 100ms to 500ms, the judgements including trustworthiness became more negative due to the decrease in response time and increase in confidence. However, when the exposure time was increased from 500ms to 1000ms, no difference was found except the boost in confidence in the judgements. Thus, clearly showing that a delayed time exposure can negatively influence trustworthy judgements, due to a boost in confidence.
Previous research investigated whether social anxiety shows an interpretational bias for trustworthiness (Cooper, 2012), it was found that there was no relevant relationship between the two variables (Staugaard, 2010). However, recent research found that individuals with high social anxiety can overestimate social danger from facial cues (Gutierrez-Garcia & Calvo, 2016), thus exhibiting a bias of untrustworthy judgements and showing an association between social anxiety and trustworthiness (Willis, Dodd & Palermo, 2013). Consequently, previous research clearly shows a positive association between the attractiveness of an individual’s face and our perception of trustworthiness (Little, Roberts, Jones & DeBruine, 2012; Todorov et al, 2009; Willis & Todorov, 2006). Therefore, this research aims to investigate similar variables due to lack of recent research and research investigating social anxiety and trustworthiness. Research investigating variables such as attractiveness, time exposure and social anxiety have led this research to explore whether our findings can support previous research.
Thus, this investigation will evaluate whether attractive faces are deemed more trustworthy then unattractive faces after a minimal and delayed time exposure and whether social anxiety influences this decision.
Hypothesis 1: Attractive faces will be deemed to be more trustworthy than unattractive faces, regardless of time exposure and social anxiety.
The current study seeks to extend previous research regarding the influence of attractive facial features on the trait judgement of trustworthiness. Previous research has clearly shown that individuals associate good facial features with socially desirable personality traits (Dion et al, 1972), which can be explained by the ‘halo effect’. Research investigating the association between attractiveness and trustworthiness can conclude that faces deemed more attractive will have a positive perception of trustworthiness judgements (Little et al, 2012; Todorov, 2012). Therefore, the first hypothesis will aim to explore the relationship between attractiveness and trustworthiness, predicting the attractive faces will receive more trustworthy judgements compared to the unattractive faces.
Hypothesis 2: After a delayed time exposure individuals will be more likely to rate attractive faces trustworthy and unattractive faces untrustworthy than the rapid exposure condition.
Trait judgements have shown to be made rapidly and automatically after the immediate exposure of 100ms (Ballew et al, 2007; Todorov et al., 2005). Research has shown no change in trustworthy judgements after a longer time exposure (Todorov et al, 2009). However, it has been found longer exposure increases the confidence in the decision, leading to either a stronger positive judgement or negative judgement (Willis et al, 2006). Therefore, it is expected that in the delayed condition, a delayed exposure to the faces will result in a stronger correlation in trustworthy and untrustworthy judgements than the rapid judgement.
Hypothesis 3: Individuals who score higher for social anxiety will be more likely to rate faces untrustworthy than those individuals with lower social anxiety levels.
There has been little and contradicting evidence into whether social anxiety levels influence trustworthy inferences. Research has shown a clear association between high social anxiety and overestimating social danger and exhibiting bias of untrustworthy judgements (Gutierrez-Garcia et al, 2016; Willis et al, 2013). Therefore, it is predicted that those who score higher in the social anxiety questionnaire will be more likely to rate faces untrustworthy than those with lower social anxiety levels.
2 Method
2.1 Design
This research consisted of a 2x2x1 repeated measures design, which includes three independent variables: attractiveness (high/low), exposure time (rapid/long) and social anxiety. The dependent variable that will be measured is perceived trustworthiness (trustworthy/untrustworthy).
2.2 Participants
The participants consisted of forty undergraduates (21 females/ 19 males) from Bournemouth University aged 19- 26 (M=21.1, SD=1.6). These participants will be recruited through the Psychology research system at Bournemouth University called SONA as partial course credits or through word of mouth through advertisement on the university grounds. Therefore, this research used volunteer sampling, as participants volunteered for participation in the study.
2.3 Materials
To measure the participants’ social anxiety, a self-rating assessment tool known as the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) (Mattick & Clarke, 1998) was used (see Appendix A). Previous research investigating the validity and reliability of the SIAS has suggested the scale is psychometrically sound (Brown, Turovsky, Heimberg, Juster, Brown & Barlow, 1997; Mattick & Clarke, 1998), as it was found the SAIS positively correlated with scores on the Fear of negative evaluation scale, social avoidance and distress scale, social phobia and anxiety inventory (Ries et al, 1996), the interaction anxiety and audience anxiety (Leary, 1983a). More recent findings can further support the SIAS, as it was suggested that SIAS demonstrates adequate internal consistency (Le Blanc, Bruce, Heimberg, Hope, Blanco, 2014) as correlation with measures of related and unrelated constructs discriminated individuals with social anxiety from those without. Conversely, limitations of the short forms of SIAS has been recognized as it may show different relationships to each other or long forms, therefore future research should attempt to examine and compare psychometric qualities of all short forms of the SIAS. Furthermore, the SIAS is a self-report questionnaire leading to the issues of reliability, subjectivity and response bias, as participants are able to falsify responses for socially desirable reasons (Mattick & Clarke, 1998) or influencing a truthful response by integrating multiple sources of information to generate a response.
Furthermore, participants were presented with a total of 40 photographs throughout this study using a computerized experimental procedure, E-Prime® (Psychology Software Tools, Inc.; Sharpsburg, PA, USA). These photographs consisted of 20 attractive faces and 20 unattractive neutral faces, which were obtained from an unpublished study, where faces were constructed and piloted on ratings of attractiveness and unattractiveness on a scale of 1-5. The faces were taken against a constant background and cropped to reduce any factors that may influence the perception of attractiveness and trustworthiness of participants. Furthermore, the outline of the face was marked to mask the image, excluding hair or any other non-facial information in the image. Using the E-prime software, all photographs could be randomly presented to the participants, and exposed to the participants at various times depending on the condition.
2.4 Procedure
Participants carried out the experiment in a Psychology study lab at Bournemouth University, where they were able to take part in the experiment. Firstly, all participants were given an information sheet (see Appendix B), which briefly described the study and what it will consist of, alongside an informed consent form (see Appendix C). If participants wished to continue with the study, they were then given the SIAS (Mattick & Clarke, 1998) to complete. Participants took up to five minutes to complete this task. When completed the participant began the next part of the study using the computer available in the study lab. Participants either began with the rapid or delayed condition; alternating which condition they began with between participants. After verbally explaining and visually explaining the task to the participants they were asked to begin the study when they were ready. Participants were exposed to twenty faces, which were presented individually in a randomized order from 20 unattractive and 20 attractive photographs in each trial. Participants were next asked to respond if they believed the face they were presented with was trustworthy or not, using keys: 1 (trustworthy) and 9 (untrustworthy). Each trial lasted one minute and 30 seconds. The task for the trials was identical for both conditions, however, in the delayed condition the participant was exposed to the image for 700ms, compared to the rapid condition where the image was presented to the participant for 100ms. Each trial for both the rapid and delayed condition was repeated four times for each condition, resulting in a total of eight trials (four rapid and four delayed) for each participant, thus judging an overall of 320 faces for trustworthy inferences. This section of the experiment lasted between 20 and 25 minutes for each participant. Overall, the experiment lasted 30 minutes. Finally, when participants completed the study, they were provided with a debrief sheet (see Appendix D), informing them the research behind the experiment alongside the aim of the study, providing contact details of the experimenter for further questions.
2.5 Ethical considerations
To ensure all ethical guidelines were met throughout the study, Bournemouth University Ethics Committee granted ethical approval. Throughout the study, the BPS Code for Human Research Ethics were followed to ensure that the research was designed, reviewed and conducted to ensure that the study respects the rights and dignity of all participants. It was ensured that the ethical guidelines, such as informed consent; anonymity; right to withdraw and debriefing the participants at the end of the study were all met. The participants were also offered break periods throughout the study, to avoid potential risks of psychological well-being.
3 Results
A two-way repeated measures ANCOVA was performed to determine the effects of attractiveness, time exposure and social anxiety on trustworthy judgements. It was decided this was the appropriate statistical method as the experiment consisted of three independent variables (both categorical and continuous) and a continuous dependent variable, as an average of the trustworthy ratings for each participant’s trial was calculated.
Two-way repeated measures ANCOVA showed that the covariate social anxiety was multicollinearity and failed to reach significance alongside the other independent variables. To ensure the analyses were correct, social anxiety was centred to reduce multicollinearity. Analysis of the standardized residuals showed that trustworthy ratings were normally distributed, as assessed by the Shapiro-Wilk test of normality (p> .05), for attractive faces in the rapid condition (p= 0.20) and attractive faces in the delayed condition (p= 1). However, normality was violated for trustworthy ratings for unattractive faces in the rapid condition (p= 0.04) and unattractive faces in the delayed condition (p= 0.01) (see Appendix E). Furthermore, there were outliers found in the data set, as assessed by three cases with standard residuals greater than ±3 standard deviations. Due to the violation of the assumption, outliers were checked by removing the outliers and re-running the analyses, however, there was no significant difference in results, thus the outliers were kept in the analyses and no outlier was excluded from the dataset. The assumption of sphericity was met for face attraction, time exposure, and the interaction, as assessed by Greenhouse-Geisser’s test of sphericity (ε=1) (see Appendix F).
The findings found that trustworthy ratings were greater in the attractive condition (M= .71, SE= .03) compared to the unattractive condition (M= .20, SE= .03), a mean difference of 0.51, 95% CI [0.45, 0.57] (see Appendix G). Furthermore, trustworthy ratings were greater in the rapid (M= .46, SE= .03) compared to the delayed condition (M= .45, SE= .02), a mean difference of 0.01, 95% CI [-.008, 0.03] (see Table 1). Additionally, trustworthy ratings were greater for attractive faces in the delayed condition, M= .73, SE= .03, 95% CI [.68, .78], compared to the attractive faces in the rapid condition M= .70, SE= .03, 95% CI [.62, .76] unattractive faces in the rapid condition M= .23, SE= .03, 95% CI [.17, .28] and unattractive faces in the delayed condition M= .17, SE= .03 respectively (see Table 2).
There was a statistically significant interaction between face attraction and time exposure, F (1,38)= 20.54, p< .0005, ε=0.35. The main effect of face attraction, F (1,38)= 339.13, p< .0005, ε= .90, significantly impacted trustworthy ratings, thus the findings can reject the null hypotheses. However, the main effect of exposure, F (1,38)= 1.39, p= .25, ε= .04, and the covariate motivation of social anxiety, F (1,38)= 1.07, p= .31, ε= .03, failed to significantly impacted trustworthy ratings, thus suggesting the findings failed to reject the null hypotheses (see Table 3).
Table 1.
Pairwise Comparisons, Differences between the Conditions.
Mean Std. Error Mean Difference Significance 95% CI for Difference
Lower Bound Upper Bound
Attractive 0.71 0.03 0.51 < .0005 0.45 0.57
Unattractive 0.20 0.03 -0.51 < .0005 -0.57 -0.45
Rapid 0.46 0.03 0.01 0.25 -0.01 0.03
Delayed 0.45 0.03 -0.01 0.25 -0.03 0.01
Note: Attractive= Attractive faces, Unattractive= Unattractive faces, Rapid= Rapid Exposure to faces, Delayed= Delayed Exposure to faces.
Table 2.
Descriptive Statistics of the Conditions.
Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error 95% Confidence Interval
Lower Upper
Attractive_Rapid 0.70 .04 0.03 0.62 0.76
Attractive_Delayed 0.73 .04 0.03 0.68 0.78
Unattractive_Rapid 0.23 .00 0.03 0.17 0.28
Unattractive_Delayed 0.17 .06 0.03 0.12 0.22
Note: Attractive_Rapid= refers to Attractive faces in the Rapid condition, Attractive_Delayed= refers to the Attractive faces in the Delayed condition, Unattractive_Rapid= refers to the Unattractive faces in the Rapid condition and Unattractive_Delayed= refers to the Unattractive faces in the Delayed condition.
Note: Mean Square= refers to the Error Variance, F value= Variation between sample means/ Variation within the samples, p= Statistical Significance,
ε= Estimated Epsilon.
Table 3.
Two-Way Repeated Measures ANCOVA Predicting the Difference in Trustworthy Ratings based on Face Attraction, Time Exposure and Social Anxiety.
Mean square F value p ε
Face Attraction 10.43 339.13 < .0005 0.90
Time Exposure 0.01 1.39 0.25 0.04
Social Anxiety Centered 0.10 1.07 0.31 0.03
Face Attraction* Time Exposure 0.09 20.54 < .0005 0.35
4 Discussion
The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether findings could support previous literature in suggesting that there is a significant relationship between attractiveness, social anxiety, time exposure and trustworthy judgements. Accordingly, as predicted it was indicated that there was a significant main effect of face attraction and the interaction of face attraction and time exposure on trustworthy ratings. However, the analyses failed to support the prediction of hypothesis three that social anxiety significantly impacted on trustworthy ratings.
4.1 Hypothesis 1
In the first hypothesis, it was predicted that participants would rate attractive faces as more trustworthy than unattractive faces. The current findings support the hypothesis, indicating that trustworthy ratings were greater for attractive faces compared to unattractive faces, suggesting that attractive faces are perceived as more trustworthy. Furthermore, the findings also suggested that individuals were more likely to rate unattractive faces untrustworthy. Consequently, the main effect of face attraction showed to have a significant impact on trustworthy ratings.
The findings support theoretical literature, in suggesting that individuals find attractive faces more trustworthy than unattractive faces (Little et al, 2010; Todorov et al, 2012). As previously discussed, the ‘halo effect’ can be used as an explanation to why individuals deem attractive faces more trustworthy, as we naturally associate attractive facial features with positive personality traits such as trust and unattractive facial features with negative personality traits such as being untrustworthy (Dion, 1972). As critical personality judgements such as trustworthiness can determine important outcomes throughout life (Little et al, 2011b; Cannon, 2012), it could be suggested that the findings could derive from humans’ innate behaviour to judge others in order maximize their reproductive quality (Miller et al, 1998) through mating choices and other life outcomes including potential jobs and life success (Wade et al, 2003). Such important outcomes could give an explanation for why individuals associate attractive facial features, which are perceived as ‘positive’ facial features to more positive outcomes. Whereas, humans initially avoid trusting unattractive individuals, as they believe it associates with more negative personality traits and outcomes (Bzdok et al, 2011). Based on previous literature, it can be argued that the significant effect of attractive faces on trustworthy inferences is a result of attractiveness being a critical factor determining personality judgements such as trustworthiness.
A potential advantage in the current study is that the findings can be generalized to a larger population, due to the proportion of male and female participants in the study. Ensuring that the results are a representative of the population studied and thus increasing the external validity of the study. A further strength could be that faces were cropped to avoid any factors such as clothing and hairstyles influencing the perception of attraction and trustworthiness, reducing the influence of other external factors on participants’ judgements. On the contrary, a potential methodological issue with the lack of realism in the images participants’ were shown is the lack of real-life settings, which may have led to difficulties when judging trustworthy inferences. This may have led to our findings lacking ecological validity.
Potential implications that may have arisen could be the individual and cross-cultural differences in attractive inferences, as individuals have specific preferences that vary across cultures for what they deem attractive in others’ facial features. This can be supported by the social construction theory, which suggests that there are differences such as culture and gender in interpersonal attraction views that are a result of social forces (Pines, 2001). Research suggests it is evident that individuals have different preferences of attractiveness across cultures (Daibo, Murasawa & Chou, 1994), where people have also been found to perceive own-race faces to be more attractive than other-race faces (Rhodes et al, 2005). These findings can suggest that ethnicity of faces in this study could have played a factor in influencing attractiveness judgements.
Therefore, it is recommended that future research should investigate potential influencing factors such as ethnicity and gender to determine whether these factors can impact the perception of attractiveness and further trustworthy judgements, to widen our knowledge on person perception. Additionally, to increase the ecological validity in future studies, researchers should aim to investigate these findings further through a more realistic approach, and where participants judge faces on trustworthy inferences in a face-to-face interaction.
4.2 Hypothesis 2
Hypothesis 2 predicted that participants would rate attractive faces as trustworthy and unattractive faces as untrustworthy more confidently in the delayed condition than the rapid condition, due to the delayed exposure of the faces to the participant. Thus, it was predicted that the delayed condition would show a greater difference in trustworthy ratings compared to the rapid condition. Our findings failed to support that the main effect of time exposure significantly influenced trustworthy ratings. Although, the interaction between face attraction and time exposure was significant in impacting trustworthy ratings, where trustworthy ratings were significantly greater for attractive faces in the delayed condition.
Our findings therefore complement previous literature, in suggesting that individuals will show either a stronger positive judgement or negative judgement when exposed to the faces for a longer period of time, which was shown in the findings for this study for attractive faces in the delayed condition, due to the increase of confidence in decisions (Willis et al, 2006). These findings could be explained by the mere exposure effect, which is also referred to by the ‘familiarity principle’, which suggests that the ‘mere repeated exposure of an individual to a stimulus is a sufficient condition for the enhancement of their attitude towards it” (Zajonc, 1968). As participants were repeatedly exposed to the same faces throughout the study in each trial, this would have led to participants’ familiarity with the faces being increased, which has shown to increase attraction towards the face even when the exposure is unconscious (Bornstein, 1989; Little & Hancock, 2002). Interestingly, our findings could suggest that individuals developed a stronger judgement of trustworthiness when exposed to the face for a longer period of time, as their attractive and unattractive judgements became stronger as they became more familiar the face. As time exposure alone did not show to significantly make a difference in trustworthy ratings, Todorov et al (2009) can support these findings in showing that there is no change in trustworthy judgements. However, it can be concluded that time exposure alongside attraction can be a critical factor in determining trustworthiness.
As previously discussed, the mere repeated exposure of faces in the current study has shown to be a possible influence in the significant findings for stronger positive trustworthy inferences for attractive faces. Future research should aim to expose the same face to participants no more than once to avoid the influence of familiarity.
4.3 Hypothesis 3
Hypothesis 3 predicted that those participants with a higher social anxiety score would be more likely to rate faces as untrustworthy than trustworthy. The current findings failed to support this hypothesis, as social anxiety failed to reach significance in the analyses, and therefore failed to significantly impact trustworthy ratings.
Previous literature suggested that social anxiety could influence trustworthy ratings due to overestimation of social danger, which leads to an increase in the likelihood of exhibiting an untrustworthy response (Willis et al, 2013). As our findings failed to support the previous study, there is contradicting research in showing social anxiety actually impacts trustworthy ratings. Although our findings imply social anxiety has no direct influence on trustworthy inferences, it may be that social anxiety enhances the likelihood of exhibiting an untrustworthy judgement alongside influencing factors such as the expression of faces (Gutierrez-Garcia et al, 2016).
The use of the SIAS (Mattick & Clarke, 1998), a self-questionnaire assessment tool to assess the levels of social anxiety can be seen as advantageous, due to the consistency with many other social anxiety self-questionnaires (Le Blanc et al, 2014), with previous research showing high internal and external validity and reliability (Brown et al, 1997). Although, using a self-rating questionnaire could have led to the methodological issues of subjectivity and response bias. To avoid any factors from influencing the participants’ social anxiety, the experiment was conducted in a room where participants were alone when carrying out all tasks. However, a methodological issue that this may have lead to, is that the conditions of taking part in an experiment may have influenced the participants’ anxiety levels, as a social situation may have influenced participants beliefs about higher expected standards for social performance (Hofmann, 2007).
Limitations of this study can be related to the restrictions in generalising the presented results, as the majority of participants assessed on average did not score for social anxiety. Moreover, our findings were unable to be generalised to those individuals with all levels of social anxiety.
Due to implications, this study may rise and failure to support the hypothesis, it is recommended that future research continue to investigate the effect of social anxiety on trustworthy judgements in more depth, as this area of research lacks supporting evidence. Furthermore, as our study lacked participants that actually clinically scored for social anxiety, future research should aim to have an equal proportion of participants that have social anxiety and those that don’t have.
Consequently, participants reported difficulties when reporting trustworthiness of faces on a rating of either 1 or 9 during the data collection. Therefore, it would be further recommended for future research to include a rating scale when judging trustworthiness, to allow a more accurate and precise judgement.
4.4 Conclusion
The current study has contributed to growing literature regarding the influence of attraction and time exposure on trustworthy judgements, as results showed a significant impact of attractiveness and delayed time exposure on trustworthy judgements. However, our analyses revealed that social anxiety did not significantly impact on trustworthy ratings, failing to be consistent with our hypothesis and previous literature. However, the inability to find a significant result for social anxiety could be a result of methodological issues previously discussed. Implications of the current study have been highlighted with recommendations for future research when investigating the effects of face attraction, time exposure and social anxiety on trustworthy inferences. With improvements made to future research, how humans unconsciously make judgements from facial features on personality traits such as trustworthiness, with respect to the influence of attraction, time exposure and social anxiety will contribute to our knowledge and understanding in a greater depth.