• Fen Xu, Dingcheng Wu, Rie Toriyama, Fengling Ma, Shoji Itakura, and Kang Lee.
• Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China. fenxu@zstu.edu.cn
• Plos One. 2012 Jan 1; 7 (4): e34859.

BackgroundAll cultural groups in the world place paramount value on interpersonal trust. Existing research suggests that although accurate judgments of another's trustworthiness require extensive interactions with the person, we often make trustworthiness judgments based on facial cues on the first encounter. However, little is known about what facial cues are used for such judgments and what the bases are on which individuals make their trustworthiness judgments.Methodology/Principal FindingsIn the present study, we tested the hypothesis that individuals may use facial attractiveness cues as a "shortcut" for judging another's trustworthiness due to the lack of other more informative and in-depth information about trustworthiness. Using data-driven statistical models of 3D Caucasian faces, we compared facial cues used for judging the trustworthiness of Caucasian faces by Caucasian participants who were highly experienced with Caucasian faces, and the facial cues used by Chinese participants who were unfamiliar with Caucasian faces. We found that Chinese and Caucasian participants used similar facial cues to judge trustworthiness. Also, both Chinese and Caucasian participants used almost identical facial cues for judging trustworthiness and attractiveness.Conclusions/SignificanceThe results suggest that without opportunities to interact with another person extensively, we use the less racially specific and more universal attractiveness cues as a "shortcut" for trustworthiness judgments.

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