Age-Related Differences in Evaluation of Social Attributes From Computer-Generated Faces of Varying Intensity

In everyday life throughout the life span, people frequently evaluate faces to obtain information crucial for social interactions. We investigated age-related differences in judgments of a wide range of social attributes based on facial appearance. Seventy-one younger and 60 older participants rated 196 computer-generated faces that systematically varied in facial features such as shape and reflectance to convey different intensity levels of seven social attributes (i.e., attractiveness, competence, dominance, extraversion, likeability, threat, and trustworthiness). Older compared to younger participants consistently gave higher attractiveness ratings to faces representing both high and low levels of attractiveness. Older participants were also less sensitive to the likeability of faces and tended to evaluate faces representing low likeability as more likable. The age groups did, however, not differ substantially in their evaluations of the other social attributes. Results are in line with previous research showing that aging is associated with preference toward positive and away from negative information and extend this positivity effect to social perception of faces.