Trustworthiness of Crowds Is Gleaned in Half a Second

Abstract

Trustworthiness is a fundamental dimension underlying trait impressions of individual faces, and these impressions predict real-world social consequences. Building on ensemble coding research from the vision sciences, we explored to what extent statistical information about trustworthiness is gleaned from rapid exposure to crowds of faces. We showed that with half-second exposures to sets of eight faces, perceivers are sensitive to the set’s average level of trustworthiness (Study 1). Moreover, this group-level sensitivity biases individual group member evaluations (Study 2), as well as downstream social behavior related to those evaluations (Study 3), toward the mean of the group. Together, the findings add to a growing body of “people perception” research and show that even high-level social characteristics such as personality traits may be spontaneously gleaned from rapid exposure to crowds of faces.