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Models of first impressions from faces have consistently found two underlying dimensions of trustworthiness and dominance. These dimensions show apparent parallels to social psychological models of inter-group perception that describe dimensions of warmth (cf. trustworthiness) and competence (cf. dominance), and it has been suggested that they reflect universal dimensions of social cognition. We investigated whether the dimensions from face and inter-group social perception models are indeed equivalent by evaluating first impressions of faces. Across four studies with differing methods we consistently found that while perceptions of trustworthiness and warmth were closely related, perceptions of dominance and competence were less strongly related. Taken together, our results demonstrate strong similarity on the first dimension across facial and social models, with less similarity on the second dimension. We suggest that facial impressions of competence and dominance may represent different routes to judging a stranger's capability to help or harm.

Three experiments are presented that investigate the two-dimensional valence/trustworthiness by dominance model of social inferences from faces (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). Experiment 1 used image averaging and morphing techniques to demonstrate that consistent facial cues subserve a range of social inferences, even in a highly variable sample of 1000 ambient images (images that are intended to be representative of those encountered in everyday life, see Jenkins, White, Van Montfort, & Burton, 2011). Experiment 2 then tested Oosterhof and Todorov’s two-dimensional model on this extensive sample of face images. The original two dimensions were replicated and a novel ‘youthful-attractiveness’ factor also emerged. Experiment 3 successfully cross-validated the three-dimensional model using face averages directly constructed from the factor scores. These findings highlight the utility of the original trustworthiness and dominance dimensions, but also underscore the need to utilise varied face stimuli: with a more realistically diverse set of face images, social inferences from faces show a more elaborate underlying structure than hitherto suggested.