Detecting trustworthiness in strangers: human faces vary in their informativeness, but cannot be accurately judged

Adam Zylbersztejn, Zakaria Babutsidze, Nobuyuki Hanaki and Astrid Hopfensitz
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Adam Zylbersztejn: Université Lyon 2, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, Emlyon Business School, GATE, CNRS, 69007, Lyon, France; research fellow at Vistula University Warsaw (AFiBV), Warsaw, Poland
Zakaria Babutsidze: SKEMA Business School, Université Côte d’Azur (GREDEG), Nice, France
Nobuyuki Hanaki: Institute of Social and Economic Research, the University of Osaka, Japan, and University of Limassol, Cyprus
Astrid Hopfensitz: Emlyon Business School, Université Lyon 2, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, GATE, CNRS, 69007, Lyon, France

No 2527, Working Papers from Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon

Abstract: In social interactions, humans care about knowing their partner’s face. Some experiments report that facial information facilitates trustworthiness detection, while others find it does not. We add to this literature by exploring heterogeneity in the demand for, and in the usefulness of, facial information. The incentivized experimental task consists in predicting strangers’ trustworthiness from neutral portrait pictures. Using data from a three-stage laboratory experiment (N = 357) including two independent sets of stimuli coupled with two distinct sources of predictions, we document substantial heterogeneity in facial informativeness. However, we find that trustworthiness detection from facial information is not an ability. Nonetheless, individuals assign excessive value to receiving facial information about others.

Keywords: trustworthiness; inference; facial information; individual heterogeneity; hidden action game; economic experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
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