Do faces or bodies matter more for first impressions?

What is it about?

In this research, we showed participants full-body (or whole-person) photos of people and asked them to rate their first impressions of a variety of attributes. We tested how much of these ratings could be explained by the pictured individuals' (1) facial appearance and (2) body appearance, and found that this depended on the attribute being rated. Faces mattered more for ratings like warmth and trustworthiness, whereas bodies were more important to ratings like dominance and socioeconomic status. Faces and bodies contributed equally for ratings of attractiveness and personality traits like extraversion and openness. One reason for these differences may be that faces and bodies contain different kinds of information, which matters more for some judgments than others. For example, faces contain clear emotion-related information, which informs judgments of trustworthiness. Bodies (including body shape, posture, and clothing) may be more informative for judgments related to status, on the other hand.

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Photo by Yegide Matthews on Unsplash

Photo by Yegide Matthews on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Little research has tested first impressions of whole persons, instead primarily focusing on faces. In real life, however, people usually do encounter whole persons rather than just faces - making understanding the role of both bodies and faces in first impressions important.