Social perception of faces around the world: How well does the valence-dominance model generalize across world regions? (Registered Report Stage 1)

Abstract

Over the last ten years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s (2008) valence-dominance model of social judgments of faces has emerged as the most prominent account of how we evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgments of faces. How well this model generalizes across world regions is a critical, yet unanswered, question. We will address this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s (2008) methodology across all world regions (Africa, Asia, Central America and Mexico, Eastern Europe, Middle East, USA and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Scandinavia, South America, UK, Western Europe, total N ≥ 9525) and using a diverse set of face stimuli. If we uncover systematic regional differences in social judgments, this will fundamentally change how social perception research is done and interpreted. If we find consistency across regions, this will ground future theory in an appropriately powered empirical test of an underlying assumption.