Judging a Book by Its Cover: The Effect of Facial Perception on Centrality in Social Networks

TL;DR

This study investigates how perceived facial traits like dominance, trustworthiness, and attractiveness influence individuals' centrality in social networks, revealing that facial perception correlates with and can predict social network positions.

Contribution

It is the first to explore the influence of facial perception on social network centrality, combining psychological and social network analysis methods.

Findings

Facial traits are correlated with network centrality.

Perceived facial traits can predict individuals' centrality in social networks.

Facial bias signals social traits influencing network positions.

Abstract

Facial appearance matters in social networks. Individuals frequently make trait judgments from facial clues. Although these face-based impressions lack the evidence to determine validity, they are of vital importance, because they may relate to human network-based social behavior, such as seeking certain individuals for help, advice, dating, and cooperation, and thus they may relate to centrality in social networks. However, little to no work has investigated the apparent facial traits that influence network centrality, despite the large amount of research on attributions of the central position including personality and behavior. In this paper, we examine whether perceived traits based on facial appearance affect network centrality by exploring the initial stage of social network formation in a first-year college residential area. We took face photos of participants who are freshmen living in the same residential area, and we asked them to nominate community members linking to different networks. We then collected facial perception data by requiring other participants to rate facial images for three main attributions: dominance, trustworthiness, and attractiveness. Meanwhile, we proposed a framework to discover how facial appearance affects social networks. Our results revealed that perceived facial traits were correlated with the network centrality and that they were indicative to predict the centrality of people in different networks. Our findings provide psychological evidence regarding the interaction between faces and network centrality. Our findings also offer insights in to a combination of psychological and social network techniques, and they highlight the function of facial bias in cuing and signaling social traits. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to explore the influence of facial perception on centrality in social networks.