Facial icons as indexes of emotions and intentions.

Various objects and artifacts incorporate representations of faces, encompassing artworks like portraits, as well as ethnographic or industrial artifacts such as masks or humanoid robots. These representations exhibit diverse degrees of human-likeness, serving different functions and objectives. Despite these variations, they share common features, particularly facial attributes that serve as building blocks for facial expressions-an effective means of communicating emotions.

The Psychological Science Accelerator's COVID-19 rapid-response dataset.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments.

A multi-lab test of the facial feedback hypothesis by the Many Smiles Collaboration.

Following theories of emotional embodiment, the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that individuals' subjective experiences of emotion are influenced by their facial expressions. However, evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed. We thus formed a global adversarial collaboration and carried out a preregistered, multicentre study designed to specify and test the conditions that should most reliably produce facial feedback effects.

In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g.

Situational factors shape moral judgements in the trolley dilemma in Eastern, Southern and Western countries in a culturally diverse sample.

The study of moral judgements often centres on moral dilemmas in which options consistent with deontological perspectives (that is, emphasizing rules, individual rights and duties) are in conflict with options consistent with utilitarian judgements (that is, following the greater good based on consequences). Greene et al. (2009) showed that psychological and situational factors (for example, the intent of the agent or the presence of physical contact between the agent and the victim) can play an important role in moral dilemma judgements (for example, the trolley problem).

A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation.

Transforming faces to mimic natural kin: A comparison of different paradigms.

The ability to detect phenotypic similarity or kinship in third-parties' faces is not perfect, but better than chance. Still, some humans are better than others at this task. Yet researchers in kinship detection have difficulties in building up large and diverse datasets of high-quality pictures of related persons.

To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply?

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov's valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions.

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology through a Distributed Collaborative Network.

Concerns have been growing about the veracity of psychological research. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges.

Holding a real object during encoding helps the learning of foreign vocabulary.

This study aims at assessing and comparing two different methods for learning new vocabulary words in a foreign language. Learning vocabulary with images as non-verbal aids was compared to learning vocabulary with real objects. The Rwandan children who participated in this study learnt French as a third language.

Women's preferences for men's facial masculinity are strongest under favorable ecological conditions.

The strength of sexual selection on secondary sexual traits varies depending on prevailing economic and ecological conditions. In humans, cross-cultural evidence suggests women's preferences for men's testosterone dependent masculine facial traits are stronger under conditions where health is compromised, male mortality rates are higher and economic development is higher. Here we use a sample of 4483 exclusively heterosexual women from 34 countries and employ mixed effects modelling to test how social, ecological and economic variables predict women's facial masculinity preferences.

Evidence That the Hormonal Contraceptive Pill Is Associated With Cosmetic Habits.

Hormonal contraception is known to cause subtle but widespread behavioral changes. Here, we investigated whether changes in cosmetic habits are associated with use of the hormonal contraceptive pill. We photographed a sample of women ( = 36) who self-reported whether or not they use the contraceptive pill, as well as their cosmetic habits.

Differential effects of makeup on perceived age.

Makeup accentuates three youth-related visual features - skin homogeneity, facial contrast, and facial feature size. By manipulating these visual features, makeup should make faces appear younger. We tested this hypothesis in an experiment in which participants estimated the age of carefully controlled photographs of faces with and without makeup.

Average ovarian hormone levels, rather than daily values and their fluctuations, are related to facial preferences among women.

Hormones are of crucial importance for human behavior. Cyclical changes of ovarian hormones throughout women's menstrual cycle are suggested to underlie fluctuation in masculinity preference for both faces and bodies. In this study we tested this hypothesis based on daily measurements of estradiol and progesterone throughout menstrual cycle, and multiple measurements of women's preference towards masculinity of faces and bodies of men.

Fitness Costs Predict Emotional, Moral, and Attitudinal Inbreeding Aversion.

In terms of sexual intercourse, the very last people we think about are our kin. Imagining inbreeding intercourse, whether it involves our closest kin or not, induces aversion in most people who invoke inbreeding depression problems or cultural considerations. Research has focused on the disgust felt when facing inbreeding intercourse between close kin but little is known about other responses.

Imprinting and flexibility in human face cognition.

Faces are an important cue to multiple physiological and psychological traits. Human preferences for exaggerated sex typicality (masculinity or femininity) in faces depend on multiple factors and show high inter-subject variability. To gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying facial femininity preferences in men, we tested the interactive effect of family structure (birth order, sibling sex-ratio and number of siblings) and parenthood status on these preferences.

Cross-cultural variation in men's preference for sexual dimorphism in women's faces.

Both attractiveness judgements and mate preferences vary considerably cross-culturally. We investigated whether men's preference for femininity in women's faces varies between 28 countries with diverse health conditions by analysing responses of 1972 heterosexual participants. Although men in all countries preferred feminized over masculinized female faces, we found substantial differences between countries in the magnitude of men's preferences.

Lexical references to sensory modalities in verbal descriptions of people and objects by congenitally blind, late blind and sighted adults.

Background: Some previous studies have revealed that while congenitally blind people have a tendency to refer to visual attributes ('verbalism'), references to auditory and tactile attributes are scarcer. However, this statement may be challenged by current theories claiming that cognition is linked to the perceptions and actions from which it derives. Verbal productions by the blind could therefore differ from those of the sighted because of their specific perceptual experience.

Development of children's ability to detect kinship through facial resemblance.

Facial features appear to be a prominent kinship cue for ascribing relatedness among human individuals. Although there is evidence that adults can detect kinship in unrelated and unfamiliar individual's faces, it remains to be seen whether people already possess the ability when they are young. To further understand the development of this skill, we explored children's ability to detect parent-offspring resemblance in unrelated and unfamiliar faces.

Is it a he or a she? Behavioral and computational approaches to sex categorization.

Can people categorize the sex of neonate faces? Our experiment tested the sex categorization of neonate faces by adult participants. We used a set of 120 Caucasian faces (adults and 4-day-old neonates) that were presented just once to a large sample of participants. A computational model of low-level visual processing, based on Gabor filters, was used to explore the relation between spatial-frequency information and sex categorization.

Firstborns' disadvantage in kinship detection.

The ability to assess genetic ties is critical to defining one's own family and, in a broader context, to understanding relationships in groups of strangers. To recognize younger siblings as such, human firstborns can rely on the perinatal association of the mother with her new baby. Later-borns, who cannot rely on such an association, will by necessity actuate alternate strategies, such as recognition of facial clues set aside by firstborns.

Perceptual factors affecting the ability to assess facial resemblance between parents and newborns in humans.

People undeniably pay attention to faces, and facial resemblance may act as a kinship cue. However, previous studies have shown that the ability to detect kinship through facial resemblance is limited, and it has been suggested that this may be due to several types of perceptual factors. To further understand the processes that underpin kinship judgment, it is important to investigate which perceptual factors predict the probability of parent-child pairs being detected as related.

Human ability to detect kinship in strangers' faces: effects of the degree of relatedness.

The resemblance between human faces has been shown to be a possible cue in recognizing the relatedness between parents and children, and more recently, between siblings. However, the general inclusive fitness theory proposes that kin-selective behaviours are also relevant to more distant relatives, which requires the detection of larger kinship bonds. We conducted an experiment to explore the use of facial clues by 'strangers', i.