SES bias in facial trustworthiness judgments: The roles of perceivers' SES and implicit SES stereotypes

People often perceive and judge others' facial trustworthiness based on social categories such as race and gender, yet the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) on these judgments remains underexplored. The present study investigated the effect of targets' SES on facial trustworthiness judgments and examined the possible mechanisms. In Experiment 1, a nonstudent community sample completed a facial trustworthiness rating task. In Experiment 2, another community sample completed a facial trustworthiness rating task, an Implicit Association Test measuring implicit SES stereotypes, and questionnaires assessing explicit SES bias and objective SES. Experiment 3 directly replicated Experiment 2 in an independent community sample. Across three experiments, high-SES faces were rated as more trustworthy than low-SES faces, indicating a pro-high-SES bias in facial trustworthiness judgments. Moreover, Experiments 2 and 3 converged on the finding that the association between implicit SES stereotypes and SES bias depended on perceivers' SES: stronger implicit SES stereotypes predicted greater pro-high-SES bias primarily among perceivers with relatively low SES. These findings suggest that SES-based bias in facial trustworthiness judgments is affected not only by targets' socioeconomic position but also by perceivers' SES, thereby advancing our understanding of SES-related bias in social perception.