Trustworthiness detection from faces: Does reliance on facial impressions pay off?

While people readily form and rely on trustworthiness impressions from faces, the question of whether these impressions are accurate remains debated. The present research examines whether having access to the facial appearance of counterparts provides a strategic advantage to participants when making trust decisions. Furthermore, we investigated whether people show above-chance accuracy in trustworthiness detection (a) when they make trust decisions vs. provide explicit trustworthiness ratings, (b) when judging male vs. female counterparts, and (c) when rating cropped images (with non-facial features removed) vs. uncropped images. Results showed that incentivized trust decisions (Study 1, n = 131) and predictions of counterparts’ trustworthiness (Study 2, n = 266) were unrelated to actual trustworthiness. Moreover, accuracy was not moderated by stimulus type (cropped vs. uncropped faces) or counterparts’ gender. Overall, these findings suggest that people are unable to detect the trustworthiness of strangers based on their facial appearance. University Additional studies are needed to examine the generalizability of our findings with larger and more diverse samples. Future studies should also examine the accuracy of trustworthiness impressions using varying types of stimuli. Cropped images, in which all non-facial aspects are removed, ensure that impressions are actually based on the facial features of counterparts. However, they do not represent the kinds of stimuli that people actually encounter in real life. Ultimately, we believe that studies using a range of different stimuli are needed to map the accuracy of trustworthiness decisions under varying conditions.