Faces displaying dominance and trustworthiness do not automatically capture attention

Contesting the viewpoint that personality impressions are spontaneously extracted from triggering facial cues, recent research suggests that such inferences emerge only when instructions are given to judge individuals in terms of the trait characteristics of interest. Notwithstanding this demonstration, however, it is possible that faces displaying fundamental character traits may exert influence over lower-level aspects of cognition that precede — and serve as the foundation for — impression formation. For example, paralleling work on emotional expressions, faces conveying important traits may automatically attract attentional resources. Accordingly, employing a dot-probe task, the current research explored whether faces varying in dominance (Expt. 1 & 2) and trustworthiness (Expt. 3) trigger attentional capture. The results were consistent across all three experiments. Using both naturalistic and computer-generated faces of women and men, neither dominance nor trustworthiness captured attention. The theoretical implications of these findings are considered.