Should I trust you? Autistic traits predict reduced appearance-based trust decisions

Hooper, Jasmine, Sutherland, Clare A. M., Ewing, Louise ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5263-1267, Langdon, Robyn, Caruana, Nathan, Connaughton, Emily, Williams, Nikolas, Greenwell-Barnden, Jayden and Rhodes, Gillian (2019) Should I trust you? Autistic traits predict reduced appearance-based trust decisions. British Journal of Psychology, 110 (4). pp. 617-634. ISSN 0007-1269

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Abstract

Facial impressions of trustworthiness guide social decisions in the general population, as shown by financial lending in economic Trust Games. As an exception, autistic boys fail to use facial impressions to guide trust decisions, despite forming typical facial trustworthiness impressions (Ewing et al., 2015). Here, we tested whether this dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to neurotypical men with high levels of autistic traits. Forty-six Caucasian men completed a multi-turn Trust Game, a facial trustworthiness impressions task, the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, and two Theory of Mind tasks. As hypothesized, participants’ levels of autistic traits had no observed effect on the impressions formed, but negatively predicted the use of those impressions in trust decisions. Thus, the dissociation between forming and using facial impressions of trustworthiness extends to the broader autism phenotype. More broadly, our results identify autistic traits as an important source of individual variation in the use of facial impressions to guide behaviour. Interestingly, failure to use these impressions could potentially represent rational behaviour, given their limited validity.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: autistic traits,broader autistic phenotype,facial impressions,facial trustworthiness,individual differences,trust behaviour,psychology(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3200
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 17 Oct 2018 14:32
Last Modified: 21 Oct 2022 20:32
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/68585
DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12357

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