Not Just About Faces in Context: Face-Context Relation Moderates the Impact of Contextual Threat on Facial Trustworthiness.

Recent work showed that the attribution of facial trustworthiness can be influenced by the surrounding context in which a face is embedded: contexts that convey threat make faces less trustworthy. In four studies ( N = 388, three preregistered) we tested whether face-context integration is influenced by how faces and contexts are encoded relationally. In Experiments 1a to 1c, face-context integration was stronger when threatening stimuli were attributable to the human action. Faces were judged less trustworthy when shown in threatening contexts that were ascribable (vs. non-ascribable) to the human action. In Experiment 2, we manipulated face-context relations using instructions. When instructions presented facial stimuli as belonging to the "perpetrators" of the threatening contexts, no difference with the control (no-instructions) condition was found in face-context integration. Instead, the effect was reduced when faces were presented as "victims." We discussed the importance of considering relational reasoning when studying face-context integration.