Research may shed light on difficulty in identifying The Traitors

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy New research may explain why people’s judgments of the trustworthiness of groups are often flawed, as seen in the hit TV series The Traitors. A study from the School of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen found when people encounter groups, they judge their trustworthiness by combining their facial features into one “composite face”, which researchers say can have serious implications for how they perceive them. “Regardless, we make these split-second judgments and they have a big impact in our everyday lives, even if these impressions are not always accurate, they invariably shape our social behaviour.” Ms Marini and her research colleagues found that rather than examining every individual face, our visual system blends the trustworthiness impressions of an entire group of faces into an average representation that gives us an immediate gist. Ms Marini continued: “Traditionally, research has focused on trustworthiness impressions at the individual face level by exploring how we form trust judgments of single individuals.