Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov's valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov's methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov's original analysis strategy, the valence-dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence-dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 5 November 2018. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7611443.v1 .

Bar Ilan University Tel Aviv Israel

Busara Center for Behavioral Economics Nairobi Kenya

Center for Advanced Hindsight Duke University Durham NC USA

Center for Basic Sciences Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University Raipur India

Center for Social and Cultural Psychology Université Libre de Bruxelles Brussels Belgium

Centre for Behavioural Science and Applied Psychology Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield UK

CLLE Toulouse University Toulouse France

Department of Applied Psychology Work Education and Economy Faculty of Psychology University of Vienna Vienna Austria

Department of Basic Psychology Autonomous University of Madrid Madrid Spain

Department of Behavioral Sciences University West Trollhättan Sweden

Department of Biochemistry Genetics and Microbiology University of Pretoria Pretoria South Africa

Department of Biology Autonomous University of Madrid Madrid Spain

Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology University of Rochester Rochester NY USA

Department of Cognition Emotion and Methods in Psychology Faculty of Psychology University of Vienna Vienna Austria

Department of Cognitive Science Occidental College Los Angeles CA USA

Department of Community and Family Medicine Universiti Malaysia Sabah Kota Kinabalu Malaysia

Department of Food Marketing Saint Joseph's University Philadelphia PA USA

Department of General Psychology University of Padova Padova Italy

Department of Human Development and Psychology Tzu Chi University Hualien Taiwan

Department of Management Aarhus University Aarhus Denmark

Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro Catanzaro Italy

Department of Philosophy Sociology Education and Applied Psychology University of Padova Padova Italy

Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of California Santa Barbara Santa Barbara CA USA

Department of Psychological Sciences Swinburne University of Technology Melbourne Victoria Australia

Department of Psychology Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu Alike Ikwo Nigeria

Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science New York University New York NY USA

Department of Psychology and Counseling United Arab Emirates University Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates

Department of Psychology and Psychodynamics Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences Krems an der Donau Austria

Department of Psychology Ashland University Danville CA USA

Department of Psychology Ben Gurion University of the Negev Beersheba Israel

Department of Psychology Boğaziçi University Beşiktaş Turkey

Department of Psychology Columbia University New York NY USA

Department of Psychology Faculty of Philosophy University of Belgrade Belgrade Serbia

Department of Psychology Fairfield University Fairfield CT USA

Department of Psychology Florida International University Miami FL USA

Department of Psychology Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster PA USA

Department of Psychology Hubei University Wuhan China

Department of Psychology Humboldt State University Arcata CA USA

Department of Psychology Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago IL USA

Department of Psychology Ithaca College Ithaca NY USA

Department of Psychology Liaoning Normal University Dalian China

Department of Psychology Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Sibiu Romania

Department of Psychology Macquarie University Sydney New South Wales Australia

Department of Psychology McGill University Montreal Québec Canada

Department of Psychology Michigan State University East Lansing MI USA

Department of Psychology Middlebury College Middlebury VT USA

Department of Psychology Mohammed 5 University in Rabat Rabat Morocco

Department of Psychology National Autonomous University of Mexico Mexico City Mexico

Department of Psychology National Cheng Kung University Tainan City Taiwan

Department of Psychology Neuroscience and Behaviour McMaster University Hamilton Ontario Canada

Department of Psychology New York University New York NY USA

Department of Psychology North Dakota State University Fargo ND USA

Department of Psychology Pacific Lutheran University Tacoma WA USA

Department of Psychology Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice Košice Slovakia

Department of Psychology Renmin University of China Beijing China

Department of Psychology Stockholm University Stockholm Sweden

Department of Psychology Sunway University Subang Jaya Malaysia

Department of Psychology Tufts University Medford MA USA

Department of Psychology UiT The Arctic University of Norway Tromsø Norway

Department of Psychology Université Grenoble Alpes Saint Martin d'Hères France

Department of Psychology Université Ibn Tofail Kénitra Morocco

Department of Psychology University of California Riverside Riverside CA USA

Department of Psychology University of Copenhagen Copenhagen Denmark

Department of Psychology University of Dayton Dayton OH USA

Department of Psychology University of Denver Denver CO USA

Department of Psychology University of Essex Colchester UK

Department of Psychology University of Goettingen Goettingen Germany

Department of Psychology University of Gothenburg Gothenburg Sweden

Department of Psychology University of Johannesburg Johannesburg South Africa

Department of Psychology University of Kassel Kassel Germany

Department of Psychology University of Michigan Ann Arbor MI USA

Department of Psychology University of Oslo Oslo Norway

Department of Psychology University of Porto Porto Portugal

Department of Psychology University of Potsdam Potsdam Germany

Department of Psychology University of Sonora Hermosillo Mexico

Department of Psychology University of Tehran Tehran Iran

Department of Psychology University of Tennessee Knoxville Knoxville TN USA

Department of Psychology University of Toronto Toronto Ontario Canada

Department of Psychology Üsküdar University Istanbul Turkey

Department of Psychology Wesleyan College Middletown CT USA

Department of Psychology Willamette University Salem OR USA

Department of Psychology Yale University New Haven CT USA

Department of Psychology Yasar University Izmir Turkey

Department of Social and Work Psychology University of Brasília Brasília Brazil

Department of Social Psychology Tilburg University Tilburg the Netherlands

Department of Strategy and Management Norwegian School of Economics Bergen Norway

Developmental Behavioral Genetics Lab Psychological Institute of Russian Academy of Education Moscow Russia

Discipline of Psychology Faculty of Health University of Canberra Canberra Australian Capital Territory Australia

Doctoral School of Psychology ELTE Eötvös Loránd University Budapest Hungary

EGADE Business School Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education Monterrey Mexico

Evolution and Ecology Research Centre University of New South Wales Sydney Sydney New South Wales Australia

Facultad de Ciencias de la Vida Universidad Regional Amazónica Ikiam Guayaquil Ecuador

Faculty of Arts Psychology and Theology Åbo Akademi University Turku Finland

Faculty of Education University of Presov Presov Slovakia

Faculty of Health Education and Society University of Northampton Northampton UK

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Leuven Belgium

Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences University of Geneva Geneva Switzerland

Faculty of Psychology Chulalongkorn University Bangkok Thailand

Faculty of Psychology Universidad El Bosque Bogotá Colombia

Faculty of Social Sciences University of Palermo Buenos Aires Argentina

Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte Rio Grande do Norte Brazil

FGV EAESP Sao Paulo Brazil

Harvard Kennedy School Harvard University Cambridge MA USA

Institute for Research and Development of Education Faculty of Education Charles University Prague Czechia

Institute for Socio Economics University of Duisburg Essen Essen Germany

Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology University of Glasgow Glasgow UK

Institute of Psychology Department of Experimental Psychology University of São Paulo São Paulo Brazil

Institute of Psychology ELTE Eötvös Loránd University Budapest Hungary

Institute of Psychology Faculty of Arts University of Presov Presov Slovakia

Institute of Psychology Jagiellonian University Kraków Poland

Institute of Psychology University of Pécs Pécs Hungary

Institute of Scientific Research Faculty of Psychology University of Lima Lima Peru

Instituto de Investigaciones Facultad de Psicologia Universidad de Buenos Aires Buenos Aires Argentina

Koç University Istanbul Turkey

Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives et Computationnelles Département d'Études Cognitives INSERM U960 École Normale Supérieure Paris France

Lazaridis School of Business and Economics Wilfrid Laurier University Waterloo Ontario Canada

Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research Mainz Germany

LIP PC2S Université Grenoble Alpes Grenoble France

Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences University of Melbourne Melbourne Victoria Australia

Northern Illinois University DeKalb IL USA

Playa Ancha University of Educational Sciences Valparaiso Chile

Psychology Department California State University San Marcos San Marcos CA USA

Psychology Department Ege University İzmir Turkey

Psychology Department McDaniel College Westminster CO USA

Psychology Department Montclair State University Montclair NJ USA

Psychology Department Southern Oregon University Ashland OR USA

Psychology Department University of Poitiers Poitiers France

Qufu Normal University Jining China

Research Group of Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Leuven Belgium

School of Behavioural and Health Sciences Australian Catholic University Sydney New South Wales Australia

School of Business Stevens Institute of Technology Hoboken NJ USA

School of Education National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Athens Greece

School of Higher Studies Iztacala National Autonomous University of Mexico Mexico City Mexico

School of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences Southern Illinois University Carbondale IL USA

School of Psychological Sciences and Health University of Strathclyde Glasgow UK

School of Psychological Social and Behavioural Sciences Coventry University Coventry UK

School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences University of Reading Malaysia Johor Malaysia

School of Psychology Catholic University of the North Antofagasta Chile

School of Psychology Massey University Palmerston North New Zealand

School of Psychology University of Birmingham Birmingham UK

School of Psychology University of Lincoln Lincoln UK

School of Psychology University of Nottingham Malaysia Semenyih Malaysia

School of Psychology University of Queensland Brisbane Queensland Australia

School of Psychology University of Santiago Chile Santiago Chile

School of Psychology Victoria University of Wellington Wellington New Zealand

School of Social Science and Psychology Western Sydney University Sydney New South Wales Australia

School of Social Sciences University of Dundee Dundee UK

School of Studies in Life Science Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University Raipur India

Sloan School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge MA USA

United States International University Africa Nairobi Kenya

Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados Dourados Brazil

Universidade Federal de São Carlos São Paulo Brazil

University of Oklahoma Norman OK USA

University of St Andrews St Andrews UK

Wenzhou University Wenzhou China

See more in PubMed

Olivola, C. Y. & Todorov, A. Elected in 100 milliseconds: appearance-based trait inferences and voting. J. Nonverbal Behav. 34, 83–110 (2010). DOI

Ritchie, K. L., Palermo, R. & Rhodes, G. Forming impressions of facial attractiveness is mandatory. Sci. Rep. 7, 469 (2017). PubMed DOI PMC

Willis, J. & Todorov, A. First impressions: making up your mind after 100 ms exposure to a face. Psychol. Sci. 17, 592–598 (2006). PubMed DOI

Olivola, C. Y., Funk, F. & Todorov, A. Social attributions from faces bias human choices. Trends Cogn. Sci. 18, 566–570 (2014). PubMed DOI

Todorov, A., Olivola, C. Y., Dotsch, R. & Mende-Siedlecki, P. Social attributions from faces: determinants, consequences, accuracy, and functional significance. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 66, 519–545 (2015). PubMed DOI

Van ‘t Wout, M. & Sanfey, A. G. Friend or foe: the effect of implicit trustworthiness judgments in social decision-making. Cognition 108, 796–803 (2008). PubMed DOI

Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A. & Hall, C. C. Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science 308, 1623–1626 (2005). PubMed DOI

Langlois, J. H. et al. Maxims or myths of beauty? A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychol. Bull. 126, 390–423 (2000). PubMed DOI

Wilson, J. P. & Rule, N. O. Facial trustworthiness predicts extreme criminal-sentencing outcomes. Psychol. Sci. 26, 1325–1331 (2015). PubMed DOI

Todorov, A., Said, C. P., Engell, A. D. & Oosterhof, N. N. Understanding evaluation of faces on social dimensions. Trends Cogn. Sci. 12, 455–460 (2008). PubMed DOI

Jack, R. E. & Schyns, P. G. Toward a social psychophysics of face communication. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 68, 269–297 (2017). PubMed DOI

Oosterhof, N. N. & Todorov, A. The functional basis of face evaluation. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 105, 11087–11092 (2008). PubMed DOI

Morrison, D., Wang, H., Hahn, A. C., Jones, B. C. & DeBruine, L. M. Predicting the reward value of faces and bodies from social perception. PLoS ONE 12, e0185093 (2017). PubMed DOI PMC

Wang, H., Hahn, A. C., DeBruine, L. M. & Jones, B. C. The motivational salience of faces is related to both their valence and dominance. PLoS ONE 11, e0161114 (2016). PubMed DOI PMC

Henrich, J., Heine, S. & Norenzayan, A. The weirdest people in the world? Behav. Brain Sci. 33, 61–83 (2010). PubMed DOI

Kline, M. A., Shamsudheen, R. & Broesch, T. Variation is the universal: making cultural evolution work in developmental psychology. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 373, 20170059 (2018). PubMed DOI

Sutherland, C. A. M. et al. Facial first impressions across culture: data-driven modeling of Chinese and British perceivers’ unconstrained facial impressions. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 44, 521–537 (2018). PubMed DOI

Wang, H. et al. A data-driven study of Chinese participants’ social judgments of Chinese faces. PLoS ONE 14, e0210315 (2019). PubMed DOI PMC

Han, C. et al. Cultural differences in preferences for facial coloration. Evol. Hum. Behav. 39, 154–159 (2018). DOI

Perrett, D. I. et al. Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness. Nature 394, 884–887 (1998). PubMed DOI

Xie, S. Y., Flake, J. K. & Hehman, E.Perceiver and target characteristics contribute to impression formation differently across race and gender. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 117, 364–385 (2019). PubMed DOI

Li, N. P., Valentine, K. A. & Patel, L. Mate preferences in the US and Singapore: a cross-cultural test of the mate preference priority model. Pers. Individ. Differ. 50, 291–294 (2011). DOI

Ting-Toomey, S. in The Challenge of Facework: Cross-Cultural and Interpersonal Issues (ed. Ting-Toomey, S.) 1–14 (State Univ. New York Press, 1994).

Tan, C. B. Y., Stephen, I. D., Whitehead, R. & Sheppard, E. You look familiar: how Malaysian Chinese recognize faces. PLoS ONE 7, e29714 (2012). PubMed DOI PMC

Chartier, C., McCarthy, R. & Urry, H. The Psychological Science Accelerator (Association for Physical Science, 2018).

Chawla, D. S. A new ‘accelerator’ aims to bring big science to psychology. Science https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aar4464 (2017).

Moshontz, H. et al. The Psychological Science Accelerator: advancing psychology through a distributed collaborative network. Adv. Methods Pract. Psychol. Sci. 1, 501–515 (2018). PubMed DOI PMC

Widaman, K. F. On common factor and principal component representations of data: implications for theory and for confirmatory replications. Struct. Equ. Modeling 25, 829–847 (2018). DOI

Hehman, E., Sutherland, C. A., Flake, J. K. & Slepian, M. L.The unique contributions of perceiver and target characteristics in person perception. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 113, 513–529 (2017). PubMed DOI

Sutherland, C. A., Rhodes, G., Burton, N. S. & Young, A. W.Do facial first impressions reflect a shared social reality? Br. J. Psychol. 111, 215–232 (2020). PubMed DOI

Oh, D., Dotsch, R., Porter, J. & Todorov, A.Gender biases in impressions from faces: empirical studies and computational models. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 149, 323–342 (2020). PubMed DOI

Oh, D., Shafir, E. & Todorov, A. Economic status cues from clothes affect perceived competence from faces. Nat. Hum. Behav. 4, 287–293 (2020). PubMed DOI

Collova, J. R., Sutherland, C. A. & Rhodes, G. Testing the functional basis of first impressions: dimensions for children’s faces are not the same as for adults’ faces. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 117, 900–924 (2019). PubMed DOI

Stolier, R. M., Hehman, E., Keller, M. D., Walker, M. & Freeman, J. B. The conceptual structure of face impressions. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 115, 9210–9215 (2018). PubMed DOI

Stolier, R. M., Hehman, E. & Freeman, J. B. A dynamic structure of social trait space. Trends Cogn. Sci. 22, 197–200 (2018). PubMed DOI

Ma, D. S., Correll, J. & Wittenbrink, B. The Chicago Face Database: a free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behav. Res. Methods 47, 1122–1135 (2015). PubMed DOI

Bainbridge, W. A., Isola, P. & Oliva, A. The intrinsic memorability of face photographs. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 142, 1323–1334 (2013). PubMed DOI

Sutherland, C. A. et al. Social inferences from faces: ambient images generate a three-dimensional model. Cognition 127, 105–118 (2013). PubMed DOI

Burt, C. The factorial study of temperament traits. Br. J. Psychol. Stat. Sect. 1, 178–203 (1948). DOI

Tucker, L. R. A Method for Synthesis of Factor Analysis Studies Personnel Research Section Report No. 984 (Department of the Army, 1951).

Davenport, E. C. Jr Significance testing of congruence coefficients: a good idea? Educ. Psychol. Meas. 50, 289–296 (1990). DOI

Lorenzo-Seva, U. & ten Berge, J. M. F. Tucker’s congruence coefficient as a meaningful index of factor similarity. Methodology 2, 57–64 (2006). DOI

Fabrigar, L. R., Wegener, D. T., MacCallum, R. C. & Strahan, E. J. Evaluating the use of exploratory factor analysis in psychological research. Psychol. Methods 4, 272–299 (1999). DOI

Park, H. S., Dailey, R. & Lemus, D. The use of exploratory factor analysis and principal components analysis in communication research. Hum. Commun. Res. 28, 562–577 (2002). DOI

Cliff, N. The eigenvalues-greater-than-one rule and the reliability of components. Psychol. Bull. 103, 276–279 (1988). DOI

Zwick, W. R. & Velicer, W. F. Comparison of five rules for determining the number of components to retain. Psychol. Bull. 99, 432–442 (1986). DOI

O’Connor, B. P. SPSS and SAS programs for determining the number of components using parallel analysis and Velicer’s MAP test. Behav. Res. Methods Instrum. Comput. 32, 396–402 (2000). PubMed DOI

Schmitt, T. A. Current methodological considerations in exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. J. Psychoeduc. Assess. 29, 304–321 (2011). DOI

Courtney, M. G. R. Determining the number of factors to retain in EFA: using the SPSS R-Menu v2.0 to make more judicious estimations. Pract. Assess. Res. Eval. 18, 1–14 (2013).

Africans and Europeans differ in their facial perception of dominance and sex-typicality: a multidimensional Bayesian approach