Abstract
Previous studies suggest that observers’ facial expressions influence on emotion, leading different perceptions. In the present, study, we investigated how observers’ facial expression influence perceptions of personal traits. In the experiment, participants were asked to make specific facial expressions with a wood chopstick without changing their emotion and they judged two kinds of partner’s traits, trustworthiness and dominance. The results showed that persons with a happy expression were judged as high trustworthy than with a disgust expression and observers’ expression did not affect judgment. On the other hand, persons with a disgust expression were judged as high dominant than with a happy expression and the difference between two expressions was much larger when participants’ expression was disgust-like. In social communication scenes, some of personal traits inferred from facial expressions are unstable and they are decided by mutual interactions between the partner and receiver.
