Facial appearance and impressions of credibility: The effects of facial babyishness and age on person perception

The babyface overgeneralization effect is perceiving that people whose facial features resemble those of children have childlike traits, and treating them accordingly. This experiment sought to replicate the US findings with a South-European sample, to examine the impact of facial maturity on impressions of truthfulness, and to examine the influence of age on person perception. Three-hundred and twenty-four Spanish undergraduates were shown a photograph and had to rate it on a series of behavioural-tendency and trait scales measuring honesty, truthfulness, strength, dominance, intelligence, naivety, and warmth. The photographs were babyfaced, intermediate, and mature faced computer-manipulated versions of three pictures of the same individual at three different ages. Results indicate that the experimental manipulations significantly affected most of the dependent variables. Babyfaced individuals were perceived as the most truthful, and children as the most deceitful. However, when the deceit concerned a sexual abuse allegation, children were rated as the least deceitful. These results support the existence of (a) the babyface overgeneralization effect, (b) the stereotype that children are unreliable witnesses, and (c) the belief that children never lie about sexual abuse offenses. They also suggest that facial babyishness and age may be static perceived deception cues that may account for the demeanour bias found in nonverbal research on the detection of deceit.