Face researchers, we need to be more careful describing research. This paper basically suggests that people pose in ways that are stereotypically associated with trustworthiness (e.g. smile more) when trust is more important in a society. But it’s so easily read as phrenology. https://twitter.com/abebab/status/1309387357595013120

The abstract of the paper and some tweets do mention “displays of trustworthiness”, but the title and many tweets just use the shorthand “trustworthiness”, which many are interpreting as “accurate index of behavioural trustworthiness”.

The regional analysis makes this even more important. I don’t know much about the measure used here, but most measures comparing regions suffer from cultural biases that favour western countries. It’s prima facie nonsense to claim one region’s people are more or less trustworthy.

I read the measure as a comparison of how socially valued trustworthiness is in that region, but am happy to be corrected (and the media about the paper is vague on this).

And regardless of a researcher’s good intentions, tech like this can be easily co-opted by a company claiming to screen potential job applicants for the most trustworthy, or decide who is least likely to default on a mortgage, or other horrific uses.

I’m curious to hear from other face researcher how much they think about potential misinterpretations and malicious use of research, and how much responsibility and culpability a basic researcher has. I know I certainly didn’t give these issues enough thought in the past.

As @ProfDaveAndress points out, the original tweet thread shifts away from perceived trustworthiness. And then gets into cross-cultural assertions based on weak correlational analyses that seem very susceptible to QRPs. My baseline assumption of good will is being tested. https://twitter.com/ProfDaveAndress/status/1309392771371982849