Children’s facial inferences: Behavioral Consequences and Prioritization Over Race Cues

• In Event: 3-124 - The Specificity of Face-Trait Inferences in Infants and Children

Integrative Statement

Humans reveal a tendency to rapidly and consistently infer character traits, such as trustworthiness and dominance, from facial appearance. This capacity is surprisingly early-emerging, with children as young as 3 years of age producing adult-like character judgments (Cogsdill, Todorov, Spelke, & Banaji, 2014). However, the ability to make basic character inferences leaves open whether, and if so when in development, children’s and adult’s use of face cues reflect rich conceptual structures that (1) have implications for behavior, and (2) are prioritized over competing cues such as racial category membership. Six experiments, using a total sample of 935 adults and children (ages 3 – 13), indicate that, indeed, children and adults make consistent face-based behavioral judgments and prioritize face cues over race cues in social evaluations, although both the consequences and relative prioritization change across development.

In the first set of experiments, children were presented with face pairs that contrasted physiognomic face-trait cues (i.e., appearance of trustworthiness, dominance, and competence), and asked either to predict which of the faces would perform a behavior, or to give a gift to one of the faces. By age 5, but not younger, children were found to make face-consistent predictions of a target’s behavior, predicting that a trustworthy-looking (vs. untrustworthy-looking) face was more likely to share goods, a dominant-looking (vs. submissive-looking) face was more likely to lift heavy boxes, and a competent-looking (vs. incompetent-looking) face was more likely to draw the best pictures (Figure 1). Also by age 5 children performed face-consistent prosocial behaviors towards targets, preferring to give gifts to trustworthy or submissive-looking faces than to untrustworthy or dominant-looking faces. Notably, the consistency of such behavioral inferences increased across development, suggesting that face cues gain influence in shaping interpersonal judgments and behavior throughout middle and later childhood.

In addition to these behavioral consequences, a second set of experiments revealed that children from age 5 onwards prioritized face cues over race cues in their evaluative character judgments. When presented with face pairs that contrasted both face-trait cues and race cues (i.e., Afrocentric vs. Eurocentric physiognomy), children and adults consistently selected the trustworthy, competent, and submissive-looking face as “nice,” regardless of whether the faces were both White, both Black, or one White and one Black. However, the prioritization of face cues over race cues decreased across middle and later childhood, alongside concurrent developments in race understanding and social desirability concerns that motivate correction for race bias (Figure 2). Although face cues exert powerful influences at all ages and guide behavioral judgments increasingly through childhood, competing cues (i.e., race cues) also gain consequence across development and eventually interact with face cues in shaping the explicit judgments of other people.

Together, the experiments presented in this talk provide new insights into the emergence of the meaningful conceptual structure behind children’s and adult’s facial inferences: face-based judgments are not arbitrary or empty associations but, from early childhood, guide consequential behavioral predictions and performance and are prioritized over competing social cues.

Authors

• Tessa E.S. Charlesworth, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Mahzarin R Banaji, Harvard University
  Non-Presenting Author