Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of schema evoked by labeling on the processing of faces as ambiguous visual stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate portrait photographs according to scales composed of personality traits and occupational prototypicality. The results showed that personality impression determines the occupational prototypicality. In Experiment 2, the way in which occupational labels for faces affect personality impression was examined. Comparing the rating of personality traits of three portrait photographs with or without occupational labels showed that presenting a face with an occupational label distorts the personality impression. Experiment 3 was done to investigate labeling effect in varying degrees of congruency between the occupations speculated from a particular face and given occupational labels. Labeling effect upon impression formation was observed in the non-congruency cases (neutral examples and incongruent examples), but not in the congruent cases. Together three results suggested that "top-down" processing dominates impression formation from faces.
