关键词: 面孔印象更新, 非言语线索, 面孔可信度, 社会距离, 眼动

Abstract: Most of the previous studies about facial impression updating were focused on verbal cues, and the patterns of nonverbal-cues-based facial impression updating with the changes of target-cue similarity are still inconsistent. Meanwhile, since most of the previous studies focused on the physical traits of targets and cues(i.e., target-cue similarity), while rarely focusing on the effects of psycho-social factors on facial impression updating, the effects of the social distance between the evaluators/targets and the nonverbal cues and its cognitive mechanisms are also not clear yet. Consequently, the present study adopted the classical impression updating paradigm, in which we present the target alone first and then present the target and the nonverbal cues together, and the difference between the participants' two target ratings is used as a measurement of facial impression updating, and the imagination paradigm is added between these two ratings as a manipulation of social distance. Combined with eye-tracking technology, in two experiments, we provided empirical evidence to answer the aforementioned research questions. In order to make a better comparison to previous research on verbal-cues-based facial impression updating, we explored the patterns of nonverbal-cues-based facial impression updating in the trustworthiness dimension. Experiment 1(N=29) explored the effect of the social distance between evaluators and cues on facial trustworthiness impression updating first, Experiment 2(N=27) directly explored the effect of the social distance between targets and cues. First of all, the results of these two experiments consistently showed that: 1) Unlike previous studies on verbal-cues-based facial impression updating that only showed assimilation effects, nonverbal-cues-based facial trustworthiness impression updating showed a dynamic interactive pattern of assimilation and contrast. 2) Overall, the social distance between evaluators/targets and cues both had a cross-dimensional assimilation effect on the impressions of facial trustworthiness . But specifically, the cross-dimensional contrast effect was also existed. 3) Except for the direct cross-dimensional effect, the social distance between evaluators/targets and cues also affected the update degree of the facial trustworthiness impressions that were made by nonverbal cues, i.e., the closer group had a higher degree of impression enhancement, while the farther group had a higher degree of impression deterioration. Secondly, We found some differences in the results of these two experiments, mainly on the the mechanisms of how social distance affects the degree of nonverbal-cues-based facial impression updating: We found that the social distance between evaluators and cues can only affect facial impression updating by affecting the relative attention between targets and cues (i.e., the difference between the fixation duration/counts of targets' eyes and cues' eyes), while the social distance between targets and cues has a more direct effect on facial impression updating, and both of them mainly affect the degree of trustworthiness impression enhancement. All in all, the current study provides new evidence for the dynamic pattern of nonverbal-cues-based facial impression updating and the influence of social distance on them, as well as its cognitive mechanisms. In the triangle system of "evaluator-target-cue", future research could further explore the dynamic updating of facial impressions from the perspective of purifying the manipulation of static social distance, adding dynamic social interactions, and exploring its neurophysiological mechanisms, etc.

Key words: Facial impression updating, Nonverbal cues, Facial trustworthiness, Social distance, Eye-tracking