Are Rich People Perceived as More Trustworthy? Perceived Socioeconomic Status Modulates Judgments of Trustworthiness and Trust Behavior Based on Facial Appearance

Qi, Yue; Li, Qi; Du, Feng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00512

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol., 10 April 2018

Sec. Personality and Social Psychology

Volume 9 - 2018 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00512

Are Rich People Perceived as More Trustworthy? Perceived Socioeconomic Status Modulates Judgments of Trustworthiness and Trust Behavior Based on Facial Appearance

1. CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
2. Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

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Corrigendum: Are Rich People Perceived as More Trustworthy? Perceived Socioeconomic Status Modulates Judgments of Trustworthiness and Trust Behavior Based on Facial Appearance
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Abstract

In the era of globalization, people meet strangers from different countries more often than ever. Previous research indicates that impressions of trustworthiness based on facial appearance play an important role in interpersonal cooperation behaviors. The current study examined whether additional information about socioeconomic status (SES), including national prosperity and individual monthly income, affects facial judgments and appearance-based trust decisions. Besides reproducing previous conclusions that trustworthy faces receive more money than untrustworthy faces, the present study showed that high-income individuals were judged as more trustworthy than low-income individuals, and also were given more money in a trust game. However, trust behaviors were not modulated by the nationality of the faces. The present research suggests that people are more likely to trust strangers with a high income, compared with individuals with a low income.

Introduction

The information extracted from a stranger’s face (e.g., gender, age, ethnicity and even personality) is critical for forming initial impressions, which play an important role in interpersonal interactions. With a glance of about 33-ms, participants are able to judge the trustworthiness of a stranger’s face (Todorov et al., 2009). A growing body of research indicates that judgments based on facial trustworthiness are crucial for interpersonal trust, which is an important precursor in human cooperation (Zebrowitz and Montepare, 2005, 2008). For example, in a trust game, people tend to invest a larger amount of money in a partner as the imaginary partner’s facial trustworthiness increases (van’t Wout and Sanfey, 2008; Stirrat and Perrett, 2010; Rezlescu et al., 2012). Moreover, people possess a homogeneous ability for forming face-based first impressions across culture and ethnicity, although people treat other-race (socially defined) encounters negatively (Ito and Bartholow, 2009; Ito and Senholzi, 2013). For example, researchers have found that, whether a stranger is from their own or an unfamiliar racial group, people can judge their personality characteristics, such as dominance, from their face (Zebrowitz et al., 1993; Xu et al., 2012). Researchers have also succeeded in predicting presidential election results based on facial competency judgments from different cultures (Sussman et al., 2013). Thus, facial judgment, particularly facial trustworthiness, plays an important role in interpersonal trust and cooperation behaviors.

Trust decisions based on facial appearance can be modulated by some additional information, such as individuals’ previous cooperation behaviors, and personal description of moral character. Past cooperation behaviors influence trustworthiness judgment and trust decisions based on facial appearance. For example, Chang et al. (2010) employed the repeated trust game and found that previous interactions influenced trust behaviors. Here, trust behaviors are defined as how much money was allocated. Furthermore, these initial appraisals of a partner’s facial trustworthiness are modulated not only by the partner’s behavioral histories experienced in previous trust games (Rezlescu et al., 2012), but also by a provided description of reciprocation history (Fareri et al., 2012; Yu et al., 2014). This is also true for information about the moral traits of partners provided before playing trust games, such as from their biographies or information about their recent behavior (Delgado et al., 2005).

Descriptions of individuals’ behavioral history other than general biographies, which indicate their moral qualities, can also modulate trustworthiness judgments based on facial appearance. For example, faces presented with positive descriptions (e.g., “act as a big brother to a fatherless child”) are perceived as being more trustworthy, while faces displayed with negative descriptions (e.g., “engage in unprotected sex after testing positive for HIV”) are perceived as being less trustworthy (Todorov and Olson, 2008; Mende-Siedlecki et al., 2013a). Furthermore, in a trust game, participants were presented with faces of the imaginary partners, along with descriptions of either praiseworthy or suspicious moral character. Participants evaluated the praiseworthy partners as more trustworthy, and thus were more likely to “share” than “keep” (Delgado et al., 2005). These studies illustrate that trust behaviors based on implicit facial impression are also modulated by explicit social background information (e.g., previous cooperation, and information about a partner’s moral character).

Recent studies have shown that social background information other than individuals’ behavioral history and moral character can also influence facial impression. For instance, when we vote for a leader based on his or her face, our preference for a leader’s face is modulated by the environment. Specifically, in war time, people prefer masculine faces, but in peace time, people prefer feminized faces (Little et al., 2007). Similarly, women living in countries with poor healthcare have strong preferences for facial masculinity (measured by facial shape) when making mate choices, and their preference for masculinity increases as the health index of countries decreases (DeBruine et al., 2010). Gender differences had been shown to influence perceived trustworthiness and trust behavior. Specifically, when people act as proposers, men show more trusting behaviors (e.g., giving more money) than women to bolster their own identity (Snijders and Keren, 1999; Chaudhuri and Gangadharan, 2003); when people act as receivers, women show more trustworthy behaviors (e.g., reciprocating more money) than men because women prefer reciprocal exchanges and harmony in the relationship (Croson and Buchan, 1999; Snijders and Keren, 1999; Eckel and Wilson, 2005; Buchan et al., 2008). When it comes to the target’s gender effect on perceived facial trustworthiness, previous results are mixed. Some studies showed trust behavior would not differ by gender of the target (Eckel and Wilson, 2003, 2005; Buchan et al., 2008). In contrast, other research on facial masculinity showed that perceived trustworthiness was associated with target’s gender (Perrett et al., 1998; Johnston et al., 2001; Kruger, 2006; Boothroyd et al., 2007; Macapagal et al., 2011). For example, masculinized faces were judged as less trustworthy (Perrett et al., 1998).

However, few studies have examined whether individual socioeconomic status (SES) can moderate people’s appraisals of another person’s face and corresponding trust behaviors, although there is some indirect evidence. For example, facial width-to-height ratio is positively correlated with aggression among people reporting lower social status or earning lower salaries but not among people reporting high SES (Goetz et al., 2013). Furthermore, there are two kinds of cue that indicate SES can influence people’s attitudes and appraisals. First, the wealth of the nation from which a stranger comes may influence people’s attitude and trust behavior. Based on their impressions on a country, people often assess traits for a typical member of the country (Realo et al., 2009) and even form their attitudes toward the products of the country (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy, 2000). The wealth of a nation is a useful index for general well-being for a stranger from another country. Generally speaking, people from high-GDP (gross domestic product per capita) nations have higher subjective well-being and are more trusting and cooperative (Tov and Diener, 2008). Previous studies have also shown that subjective well-being promotes cooperation and prosocial behaviors (Eisenberg, 1991; Thoits and Hewitt, 2001). Naturally, people from high GDP nations are expected to show more cooperative and prosocial behaviors, such as exhibiting more charitable donations (Kraus and Callaghan, 2016). Hence, we expect that people from high GDP nations will be perceived as more cooperative and thus be more trustworthy than people from low GDP nations. Second, individual income also indicates a stranger’s SES. People from high SES families are usually perceived to have better performances and personal traits. For example, students from high-SES families (relatively high household income) were expected to have better academic performance than those from low-SES families (Speybroeck et al., 2012). Several studies have also shown that people from high SES are judged as more favorable, sociable, and attractive (Gilmore and Harris, 2008; Horwitz and Dovidio, 2017). These personal traits are highly correlated with trustworthiness (Oosterhof and Todorov, 2008). Thus, we also expect that people with high income are perceived as more trustworthy than people with low income.

The present study was designed to examine whether two types of SES information, national prosperity and monthly income, can modulate facial trustworthiness judgment and subsequent trust behavior. In addition, we also explored whether trust behavior based on facial appearance is influenced by the race of a face. Recent studies showed that the trustworthiness evaluations rely on the face shape, not ethnicity. Actually, own-race faces were rated as trustworthy as other-race faces (Xu et al., 2012; Birkás et al., 2014; Sofer et al., 2017; Strachan et al., 2017). Therefore, we expected that the two types of SES information would modulate facial judgment and trust behavior, but race would not. Specifically, those faces paired with higher SES would be perceived as more trustworthy than the faces paired with lower SES.

Experiment 1

This experiment used a trust game task to examine whether people’s trust behaviors based on a partner’s facial trustworthiness would be modulated by the nationality of the partner.

Methods

Participants

A group of 32 undergraduate and graduate students (16 males) participated in a half-hour-long experiment and were offered 30 yuan (∼$4.29) as compensation for their time. Each participant provided written informed consent before the experiment. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Stimuli

67 face pictures were selected from the FERET (Phillips et al., 1998, 2000) and CAS-PEAL (Gao et al., 2008) databases, including 35 Asian faces (17 males) and 32 Caucasian faces (16 males). Facial trustworthiness was rated on a 9-point scale by a separate group of 20 subjects, and then divided into two groups as faces with high trustworthiness (mean ratings for Asian faces was 5.66 ± 0.58; Caucasian faces 6.00 ± 0.45) and faces with low trustworthiness (mean ratings for Asian faces was 4.13 ± 0.52; Caucasian faces 3.68 ± 0.50). Considering people have an inaccurate stereotype for their own country (Robins, 2005), four countries were selected from the World Bank report in 2013, including high- and low-GDP countries in Asia and Europe, excluding China (see Table 1). Another 54 subjects rated how much they were familiar with each country on a 5-point Likert scale. The familiarity ratings of Singapore compared with Vietnam [t(53) = 1.84, p = 0.071], and Norway compared with Ukraine [t(53) = 0.47, p = 0.642], showed no differences.

Table 1

	Singapore	Vietnam	Norway	Ukraine
Per capita GDP	$55182	$1911	$100819	$3900
Rank^†	12	137	4	110
Familiarity	3.31 ± 0.91	3.15 ± 0.98	2.89 ± 0.88	2.93 ± 0.93

Information about the four countries used in Experiment 1.

^†Data from the World Bank report in 2013.

Apparatus and Procedure

Participants were told that they were playing an online money distribution game with some other people. Before the experiment, every participant posed for a picture with a neutral expression and was told that their photograph would be seen by their partners during the experiment. All participants were seated comfortably in a dimly lit and sound-attenuating chamber approximately 80 cm away from a computer screen. A single trial consisted of the following sequence: initially, a face photo with a country name was displayed in the center of the screen for 2500 ms. Then, participants were required to give a trustworthiness rating for that facial photo. After that, participants were asked to decide how much of the 10 yuan (from 1 to 10 yuan) they would give to this partner in this trial. Their partner would receive quadruple the amount of money allocated by the participant and distribute it either fairly (5:5) or unfairly (3:1 or the partner keeps all the money). Participants would see the distribution results at the end of each trial and were instructed to evaluate their current emotion on a 9-point scale, where 1 indicated sad and 9 indicated happy (see Figure 1).

FIGURE 1

The task consisted of 67 trials divided into two blocks, with a short break between blocks. A practice block with eight trials was completed before the formal experiment in order to familiarize the participants with the procedure. Before the formal experiment, the participants were encouraged to use any strategy they wanted to maximize their amount of points. At the end of the experiment, one trial would be selected randomly and the actual result of the trial would be the bonus money that participant would receive.

Design

There were two independent variables of interest: national prosperity (high- vs. low-GDP countries) and facial trustworthiness (high vs. low trustworthiness). The combinations of country names and faces were counterbalanced between subjects, to ensure every face appeared with both a high-GDP and a low-GDP country name.

Results

Trust-Rating

First, to explore whether the nationalities of partners would influence perceived facial trustworthiness, we compared the trust judgments on the same face displayed with high- or low-GDP countries. T-test analysis revealed that there were no differences between faces with high and low GDP countries, either for Asian [t(34) = 1.63, p = 0.113] or for Caucasian faces [t(31) = 1.18, p = 0.247]. Participants judged facial trustworthiness without the influence of nationality.

Money

The mean money distributed to partners is shown in Figure 2. First, a 2 (national prosperity) × 2 (facial trustworthiness) × 2 (facial race) ANOVA revealed the main effect of facial trustworthiness, F(1, 31) = 99.78, p < 0.001, = 0.763. Participants allocated more money to high-trustworthy faces (5.64 ± 0.29) than to low-trustworthy faces (4.14 ± 0.28). There was neither a significant main effect of national prosperity, F(1, 31) = 1.55, p = 0.223, = 0.048, nor the main effect of race, F(1, 31) = 2.57, p = 0.119, = 0.077. There was a significant interaction of facial race and trustworthiness¹, F(1, 31) = 9.21, p = 0.005, = 0.229. The three-way interaction [F(1, 31) = 1.00, p = 0.755, = 0.003] or the interactions between national prosperity and facial trustworthy [F(1, 31) = 0.05, p = 0.825, = 0.002], between race and national prosperity [F(1, 31) = 1.64, p = 0.210, = 0.050] were not significant. Although participants showed more trust behavior toward the high-trustworthy faces, their trust judgments were not modulated by the national prosperity of the partners.

FIGURE 2

A 2 (facial gender) × 2 (participant’s gender) ANOVA was conducted to analyze gender effects on allocated money. The results revealed the main effect of participant’s gender, F(1, 30) = 6.60, p = 0.015, = 0.180. Male participants (5.59 ± 0.36) sent more money than female participants (4.27 ± 0.36). The main effect of facial gender [F(1, 30) = 0.12, p = 0.727, = 0.004] or the interaction between facial and participant’s gender [F(1, 30) = 3.43, p = 0.074, = 0.102] were not significant.

Emotion

A 2 (national prosperity) × 2 (facial race) × 2 (fair/unfair conditions) ANOVA showed a significant main effect of the distribution results, F(1, 31) = 93.60, p < 0.001, = 0.751. People felt more negative after seeing unfair distributions (3.36 ± 0.19) than fair distributions (6.35 ± 0.19). The main effects of national prosperity [F(1, 31) = 0.77, p = 0.388, = 0.024] and race [F(1, 31) = 0.50, p = 0.824, = 0.002] were not significant. The three-way interaction [F(1, 31) = 0.06, p = 0.811, = 0.002] or any two-way interaction [F_{fair × nationality} (1, 31) = 0.66, p = 0.424, = 0.021; F_{fair × race} (1, 31) = 1.20, p = 0.282, = 0.037; F_{race × nationality} (1, 31) = 0.44, p = 0.512, = 0.014] were not significant, which indicted that participants’ emotions were affected only by money distribution results but not the partner’s race or nationality.

Experiment 2

Experiment 1 verified that the partner’s facial trustworthiness affects people’s trust behaviors. However, the nationalities of the partners did not modulate people’s face-based trust behaviors. Experiment 2 examined whether people’s trust behaviors based on the partner’s facial trustworthiness would be modulated by the partner’s financial situation such as monthly income.