Do we spontaneously form stable trustworthiness impressions from facial appearance?

It is widely assumed among psychologists that people spontaneously form trustworthiness impressions of newly encountered people from their facial appearance. However, most existing studies directly or indirectly induced an impression formation goal, which means that the existing empirical support for spontaneous facial trustworthiness impressions remains insufficient. In particular, it remains an open question whether trustworthiness from facial appearance is encoded in memory.

The control of automatic imitation based on bottom-up and top-down cues to animacy: insights from brain and behavior.

Humans automatically imitate other people's actions during social interactions, building rapport and social closeness in the process. Although the behavioral consequences and neural correlates of imitation have been studied extensively, little is known about the neural mechanisms that control imitative tendencies. For example, the degree to which an agent is perceived as human-like influences automatic imitation, but it is not known how perception of animacy influences brain circuits that control imitation.