Business culture impairs facial trustworthiness judgments

TL;DR

Business culture can make people perceive trustworthy faces as less trustworthy, affecting how trust is formed.

Contribution

The study reveals that business culture influences automatic facial trustworthiness judgments, extending beyond interpersonal trust.

Findings

Participants in economics or business contexts judged trustworthy faces as less trustworthy.

Exposure to imagined business culture also reduced perceived facial trustworthiness.

The findings explain how business culture impacts trust formation processes.

Abstract

Previous research has found that business culture has a detrimental impact on interpersonal trust. To understand whether this impact extends to rapid, automatic, bottom–up judgments of facial trustworthiness, we conducted 4 experiments involving 244 participants from economic and non-economic backgrounds. We presented participants with both trustworthy and untrustworthy faces and asked them to make judgments on trustworthiness. The results show that individuals who are engaged in studying economics, work in an economics-related occupation, or are exposed to an imagined business culture evaluate trustworthy faces to be less trustworthy. The findings shed light on why and how business culture affects the formation of interpersonal trust.

Figures