recently-published study<\/a>, Psychology master\u2019s student Sophia Thierry carried out an experiment that tested how facial cues influenced adults’ interpretation of ambiguous situations.<\/p>\nThierry compiled pictures of children whose faces were rated in a previous study as being either \u2018nice\u2019 or \u2018mean.\u2019 Although the children\u2019s expressions were emotionally neutral, subtle emotional cues, along with features such as \u2018baby-faceness\u2019 versus more mature-looking and the level of attractiveness helped to influence perceptions of nice or mean, says Thierry.<\/p>\n
The children were placed in four different, ambiguous situations. The adult research participants were asked to tell a story about what they believed was happening in each scene. For example, one child might be seen as helping or as hurting the other.<\/p>\n
In two scenes, the target child had a face previously rated as high in niceness and in the other two, the child had a face previously rated as low in niceness.<\/p>\n
\u201cParticipants were more likely to say the child with a face previously rated as high in niceness was helping; they rated the behaviour of the child more positively,\u201d says Thierry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe participants indicated a child with a high-nice face would be more likely to be a good friend, as opposed to a child whose face rated low in niceness,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Thierry also read eight short stories in which a child had misbehaved, such as spilling paint on another child\u2019s artwork, and asked participants whether the action was intentional or occurred by accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdults were much more likely to respond \u2018by accident\u2019 when the child had a high-nice face than a low-nice face,\u201d says Thierry\u2019s supervisor, Professor of Psychology Catherine Mondloch.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere, the behaviour was not ambiguous, but the intention behind the behaviour was,\u201d says Mondloch, Director of Brock\u2019s Face Perception Lab.<\/p>\n
The researchers say the results have tremendous implications.<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren who look \u2018nice\u2019 get the benefit of the doubt,\u201d says Mondloch. \u201cOne can imagine that in daily life, children with high-nice faces might avoid punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mondloch and Thierry say this will shape children\u2019s development.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese effects can have cascading effects,\u201d says Thierry. \u201cA child who is perceived as being nice in an adult\u2019s first impression is likely to be treated more positively by adults and given preferential treatment. Then the child will behave in line with these expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can look at that as a self-fulfilling prophesy,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The researchers urge adults to be mindful of their initial facial biases and to refrain from making instant judgments of children based solely on facial cues.<\/p>\n
Thierry says she was interested in pursuing this line of research because, although many studies have been done on the social consequences of first impressions from adult faces, little research has been done in the area of children.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdults\u2019 behaviour towards children obviously plays such a big role on how children are treated, which has developmental outcomes, so that\u2019s why I was interested in focusing on children,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
The next phase of Thierry\u2019s research will be to test children with the same study \u2014 using the same four scenes and eight stories \u2014 to see if children are sensitive to the \u2018nice\u2019 and \u2018mean\u2019 subtle facial cues in their own interactions with their peers.<\/p>\n
She is looking for children ages 10 to 12 years old. For more details and to take part in that study, contact the Face Perception Lab at faceperceptionl@brocku.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research by Brock University\u2019s Face Perception Lab finds that the split-second perceptions of children\u2019s faces by adults lead them to make judgments on children\u2019s intentions and even their characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":71970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3319,55,1,5,38],"tags":[3357,546,1481,10285,522,5892,3325,10232],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71940"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71973,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71940\/revisions\/71973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}