@article{ref1,
title="Children use targets' facial appearance to guide and predict social behavior",
journal="Developmental psychology",
year="2019",
author="Charlesworth, Tessa E. S. and Hudson, Sa-Kiera T. J. and Cogsdill, Emily J. and Spelke, Elizabeth S. and Banaji, Mahzarin R.",
volume="55",
number="7",
pages="1400-1413",
abstract="Humans possess a tendency to rapidly and consistently make character evaluations from mere facial appearance. Recent work shows that this tendency emerges surprisingly early: children as young as 3-years-old provide adult-like assessments of others on character attributes such as &quot;nice,&quot; &quot;strong,&quot; and &quot;smart&quot; based only on subtle variations in targets' face shape and physiognomy (i.e., latent face-traits). The present research examined the behavioral consequences of children's face-trait judgments by asking whether, and if so when in development, the appearance of face-traits also (a) shapes children's judgments <i>of</i> targets' behaviors and (b) guides children's behavior <i>toward</i> targets. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that, by 3 years of age, children used facial features in character evaluations but not in judgments of targets' behavior, whereas by 5 years of age, children reliably made both character and behavior judgments from face-traits. Age-related change in behavior judgments was also observed in children's own behaviors <i>toward</i> targets: Experiments 3 and 4 showed that, by age 5 (but not earlier), children were more likely to give gifts to targets with trustworthy and submissive-looking faces (Experiment 3) and showed concordance between their character evaluations and gift-giving behaviors (Experiment 4). These findings newly suggest that, although children may rapidly make character evaluations from face-trait appearance, predicting and performing social behaviors based on face-traits may require more developed and specific understanding of traits and their relationships to behaviors. Nevertheless, by kindergarten, even relatively arbitrary and subtle face-traits appear to have meaningful consequences in shaping children's social judgments and interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0012-1649",
doi="10.1037/dev0000734",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000734"
}