Visual consciousness of faces in the attentional blink: Knowledge-based effects of trustworthiness dominate over appearance-based impressions

How we perceive and evaluate other persons depends on appearance-based impressions as well as top-down information such as knowledge about someone’s character. To date, little is known about how these two sources of information affect the conscious perception of faces, about their relative contributions and possible interactions. Here, we directly compare how social-affective knowledge and visual cues of trustworthiness impact the access of faces to visual consciousness. Low- and average-trustworthy looking faces were associated with neutral or negative information about a person’s social behavior. Trustworthiness and facial expression ratings showed robust and independent effects of both sources of information during evaluations. Under conditions of reduced attention in an attentional blink task, prioritized detection of faces associated with negative as compared to neutral person knowledge was observed, whereas facial trustworthiness did not affect detection. Thus, while both factors influenced conscious perception and evaluation, only person knowledge impacted the access to consciousness.