Person knowledge shapes face identity perception

Recognition of others’ identity through facial features is essential in life. Using both correlational and experimental approaches, we examined how person knowledge biases the perception of others’ facial identity. When a participant believed any two individuals were more similar in personality, their faces were perceived to be correspondingly more similar (assessed via mousetracking, study 1). Further, participants’ visual representations of faces belonging to individuals believed to have a more similar personality were found to have a greater physical resemblance (assessed via reverse-correlation, study 2 and 3). Finally, when participants learned about novel individuals who had a more similar personality, their faces were visually represented more similarly (study 4). Together, the findings show that the perception of facial identity is driven not only by facial features but also the person knowledge we have learned about others, biasing it toward alternate identities despite the fact that those identities lack any physical resemblance.

通过面部特征识别他人身份在人生中至关重要。本研究采用相关性与实验相结合的方法，探讨了个人知识如何影响对他人类面部身份的感知。当参与者认为任何两位个体在性格上更为相似时，他们的面部被感知为相应地更为相似（通过鼠标跟踪技术评估，研究1）。此外，研究发现，参与者对被认为性格更为相似的人的面部视觉表征在物理形态上具有更大的相似性（通过反向相关技术评估，研究2和3）。最后，当参与者了解到具有更为相似性格的新个体时，他们的面部视觉表征也更加相似（研究4）。综合以上发现，我们得出结论：面部身份的感知不仅受面部特征影响，还包括我们对他人的认知知识，这种知识使感知偏向于其他身份，尽管这些身份在物理形态上并不具有相似性。