Facial and vocal cues in perceptions of trustworthiness

Abstract

The goal of the present research was to study the relative role of facial and acoustic cues in the formation of trustworthiness impressions. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between perceived trustworthiness and perceivers' confidence in their judgments. 25 young adults watched a number of short clips in which the video and audio channel were digitally aligned to form five different combinations of actors' face and voice trustworthiness levels (neutral face + neutral voice, neutral face + trustworthy voice, neutral face + non-trustworthy voice, trustworthy face + neutral voice, and non-trustworthy face + neutral voice). Participants provided subjective ratings of the trustworthiness of the actor in each video, and indicated their level of confidence in each of those ratings. Results revealed a main effect of face-voice channel combination on trustworthiness ratings, and no significant effect of channel combination on confidence ratings. We conclude that there is a clear superiority effect of facial over acoustic cues in the formation of trustworthiness impressions, propose a method for future investigation of the judgmentconfidence link, and outline the practical implications of the experiment. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.