The influence of face on person perception.

The purpose is to examine the influence of three factors on person perception, (a) the degree of facial attractiveness, (b) the order of presentation of the faces and the verbal information of the same stimulus person and (c) the sex of the perceivers. Seventy-one male undergraduates and 89 female undergraduates were asked to rate the personalities of the two positive and two negative stimulus persons of the opposite sex, who were selected by each subject in preliminary experiment, and asked to choose what kind of relation they would have with them. Positive or negative face was presented either before or after verbal information. The main results were as follows. (a) Generally, positive faces exerted greater influence than negative faces. (b) Faces presented after verbal information were more influential than those presented before it (recency effect). (c) The influence of face on male subjects was greater than that on female subjects.