Neurocognitive processes underlying cue integration for judging others' trustworthiness

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K17326
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo (2017); Nagoya University (2015-2016)
• Principal Investigator: Suzuki Atsunobu 東京大学, 大学院人文社会系研究科(文学部), 准教授 (80547498)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 社会的認知 / 信頼性 / 顔 / 評判 / 学習・記憶 / エイジング

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research project aimed to examine various factors influencing the judgments of others' trustworthiness and the mechanisms behind them. Three interesting results were mainly obtained. First, persistent reliance on facial appearance among older adults when judging others' trustworthiness was revealed. Second, it was found that the information about someone’s untrustworthy behaviors changes the perception of his or her facial appearance, which in turn makes it difficult to update his or her trustworthiness impression later. Third, I demonstrated that people more or less believe that a variety of traits other than trustworthiness can be inferred from faces, and that this belief extremizes face-based trustworthiness judgments. These findings have made important and novel contributions to the psychology of trustworthiness judgment.

Free Research Field

実験心理学