The Effect Of Facial Attractiveness And Behavioral Information On Interpersonal Trust

Research on facial attractiveness has wildly shown the "beauty is good" effect,that is,people attach positive beliefs,emotions and attitudes to individuals with attractive faces.People also take positive action tendencies or actions towards those with attractive faces.However,the "beauty is good" effect is not so robust.According to the view of social learning,in social interaction,people will observe the behavior of partners,and consequence of behavior will strengthen their certain behavioral tendency.Therefore,in social interaction,people not only rely on the physical characteristics of the interactive object to make their judgments and decisions,but also observe the behavior of partners and then adjust the pattern of their behavior and the interactive object.The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of facial attractiveness and behavioral information on interpersonal trust in repetitive interaction.The experiment manipulates the behavioral information of partners(consistency and trend)by repeating the game of public goods,and then presents a picture of faces to the participants to investigate their allocation decisions in the trust game.In experiment 1,the behavior of partners was manipulated into consistent cooperation,random and consistent competition through continuous public goods game,in order to investigate the effects of face attractiveness on interpersonal trust under the condition of different behavioral consistency.The experimental results showed that facial attractiveness did not affect participants' trust in their partners with consistent cooperation or consistent competition.However,participants trusted partners with high facial attractiveness rather than partners with low facial attractiveness when partners' level of cooperation is random.In experiment 2,the trend of cooperation of partners was manipulated as increasing,random and decreasing through continuous public goods game,in order to investigate the effects of face attractiveness on interpersonal trust under different behavioral trends.The experimental results showed that facial attractiveness did not affect participants' trust in their partners when their level of cooperation increased gradually,level of cooperation random or level of cooperation decreased gradually.The results under the random condition of cooperative behavior are inconsistent with experiment 1.But experiment 2 found sex differences.In experiment 3,the trend of cooperation of partners was manipulated as increasing,random and decreasing through the step-level public goods game,and the presentation mode was changed from number to line chart,in order to verify the results of experiment 2,and further explore the gender differences of "beauty is good".The experimental results showed that participants trusted partners with high facial attractiveness rather than partners with low facial attractiveness when partners' level of cooperation increased gradually,level of cooperation random and level of cooperation decreased gradually.Moreover,there were gender differences in the "beauty is good" effect.Specifically,male participants trusted partners with high facial attractiveness rather than partners with low facial attractiveness when partners' level of cooperation is random.Female participants trusted partners with high facial attractiveness rather than partners with low facial attractiveness when partners' level of cooperation decreased gradually.The results support that the "beauty is good" effect only lies in people's dependence on face information in social communication when there is a lack of other reliable sources of information.When people can get the clear behavioral information of their partners,then the behavioral information itself can determine their trust in their partners.However,if the behavior of partners can not provide people with clear information,then faces attractiveness become an important source of information.In addition,there are gender differences in the "beauty is good" effect.Male participants show the "beauty is good" effect when partners' level of cooperation random.Female participants show the "beauty is good" effect when partners' level of cooperation decreased gradually.