One study found that subjects judged the trustworthiness of faces within 100 milliseconds, and that these judgments did not change even when people were given more information or time.41 This tendency to instantly peg people as likely cooperators or not appears quite early in development, with children above the age of three quickly and readily classing faces as “mean” or “nice.”42 These gut-level assessments are consistent across cultures, and play a surprisingly outsized role even in formal contexts, like court cases or political elections, where you would expect people to be guided by more
...more
