Abstract:

We often form impressions on characteristics of others from single, static samples of their appearance. It was the very first thing we see when, or even before we meet them. And these impressions influence decisions that people make in a variety of important domains, such as mate choice, employment, pro-social behaviors and so on (Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008). As an important cue to form impressions, faces usually bring rich social information (Zhang & Zhu, 2012). Both of the mainly two models of dual processing theories on impressions, continuum model and dual-process model, emphasized the role of social category and the specific individual information in impression processing (Fisk & Neuberg, 1990). And the face recognition model of Bruce and Young proposed that there were two routes to process facial characteristics, based on identity-nonspecific (include social category) or identity-specific information (Bruce &Young, 1986). Compared the theories of dual processing on impressions with face recognition model of Bruce and Young, it may suggest that processing of unknown impressions may rely on two kinds of facial information, the social category or similar characteristics and familiar faces characteristics. On the one hand, some researchers proposed that social category and stereotypes processing may be two separated processes. The social category actually is a cue to activate stereotypes (Zhang & Zuo, 2012). However, even face itself does not possess obvious characteristics of social category; individuals can also activate stereotypes based on similar social category characteristics (Zebrowitz & Montepare, 2008). On the other hand, people couldn’t directly get information from an unknown face to form impression. But the similarity between the face and familiar face could be a cue, which could help us to form consistent social evaluations and trait inference from the familiar face (Gawroski & Quinn, 2013; Verosky & Todorov, 2010, 2013). This activation of consistent social evaluations and trait inference is more than function of relational self, because it doesn’t only appear on our important persons. However, both two routes couldn’t explain that social category and stereotypes is a simultaneous or sequenced processing for the limitation of time reaction technique. Another question is the relationship between two routes is still unclear. Subsequently, the current research summarized factors of the impression processing based on unfamiliar faces, including the social category or similar social category characteristics, the similar characteristics to familiar faces, and observer factors. Finally, the current research proposed some questions still needed to be clarified. First, the face recognition model of Bruce and Young supposed that identity-nonspecific and identity-specific processing was paralleled, but recent researches showed that these processes might not be dissociable (Baudouin & Tiberghien, 2002). It suggested that the two routes of the first impressions on faces might be interacted with. Secondly, stages of the first impressions still have further studies to discuss, which may be solved by the event-related potential technique. Thirdly, observers’ factors have been ignored for a long time. Actually, personality is an important factor affecting social evaluations. For example, individuals who got high scores on openness and agreeableness hold on lager range of body size (Viren et al., 2013), which is significant to explain individual differences.

摘要：

个体往往会基于面孔特征对他人进行特质推断和社会评价，并影响个体的行为决策。结合印象形成的双加工理论和面孔加工的双通路模型，本文提出陌生面孔的印象加工主要包括两类加工方式：一是基于社会分类线索及相似特征的加工，激活个体的刻板印象；二是基于熟悉面孔的相似性特征线索，通过过度泛化激活与熟悉他人相一致的印象。并进一步阐述了两类面孔线索印象加工的过程和影响陌生面孔印象加工的相关因素。在此基础上，本文提出现有的研究在两类加工方式的交互作用及其加工阶段上尚未有深入探讨，同时指出知觉者本人的人格和面孔信息对印象加工的影响也需要在未来研究中进一步探索。