Impacts of Facial Cues on Trust Judgments in Online Trust Games Among Children and Adolescents

Based on facial features, children and adolescents can quickly judge trustworthiness of strangers, which has a great impact on their social interactions and self-protection. With the assistance of computer technology, this study designed a web-based economic trust game (an investment game) to investigate how children and adolescents perceive facial features in online social activities and establish trustworthiness based on these features, so as to shed light on building trustworthy online relationships in the era of artificial intelligence. We examined the factors influencing the formation of trustworthiness impressions among children and adolescents, including facial features (i.e., face attractiveness, age, gender), participant characteristics, and their interactions as well. We further compared their performance in the trust game with that of adults. The participants included children (N = 237, 93 females, Mage = 9.76±0.56), adolescents (N = 262, 124 females, Mage = 12.48±0.52), and adults (N = 178, 96 females, Mage = 31.82±10.42), all of whom were Chinese. In the trust game, the participants decided how much money they would like to invest in hypothetical partners, who were strangers to the participants. All the partners were Chinese adults, and a photo of each partner’ face was shown on the screen in each round of the trust game. These face photos varied in attractiveness (attractive faces, unattractive faces), gender (female faces, male faces), and age (older faces, younger faces). The results showed that the impact of face attractiveness, face age, and face gender on trustworthiness impressions varied with participants’ age and gender. Partners’ face attractiveness significantly affected trust decisions of all age groups; partners’ face age significantly influenced trust decisions of children and adolescents; and partners’ face gender had a significant effect on trust decisions of 9-year-old girls, 9-year-old and 12-year-old boys. With the increase of age, the consistency between the trust decisions by children and teenagers and those by adults increased.