Universidad de Costa Rica

LM-1032 Estrategias de Lectura en Inglés

Prof. Adriana Murillo R.
Enquiry

“Trustworthy-Looking Face Meets Brown Eyes”

by Karen Kleisner et.al.

Part I. PRE-READING

Do the following exercise BEFORE reading the text. Use the title, the
paratext, and the abstract. Circle the letter of the choice that best
completes each idea.

1. The phenomenon observed is trustworthiness / men are perceived as

more trustworthy than women / facial features influencing the
perception of trustworthiness
/ eye color influencing the perception of trustworthiness.

2. The abstract lacks information about the subjects / limitation / conclusion /

methodology of the study.

3. To determine whether eye color influences the perception of trustworthiness

describes the hypothesis / problem / main variable / methodology of the
study.

Part II. READING

A. Using the introduction, write TRUE, FALSE, or NM (NOT MENTIONED)

on the blanks. Do not use “T” or “F.”

1. True The research is based on the fact that facial appearance influences
various social interactions.
2. False The part of the human brain that evaluates trustworthiness has not been
identified yet.
3. False In Coplan’s study, there were no differences between blue- and brown-
eyed girls because they tend to be more sociable than men.
4. True The authors’ previous study indicates a relationship between eye color
and facial appearance.
5. True Paragraph three contains the hypothesis of the study and the goal of the
investigation.
B. The following diagram table sums up the information presented in the
section “Case Report”. Using specific information from that section,
complete each blank.

Stimuli: Photographs of 80 students (40 males, 40 females)

from the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague.

Equipment: They used digital camera, Canon 450D, using a

studio electronic flash and a reflection screen
and a white background.

Photographs Conditions: Students were told to assume a neutral, non-

smiling expression and to avoid any facial cosmetics and
other facial ornaments.
Scope: Only the pictures of individuals with blue or brown
eyes were selected. Had intermediate
eye colors, i.e., green were excluded.

Raters: 238 participants (142 females, 98 males).

Method: 105 participants judged _trustworthiness, 103

attractiveness, and 30 dominance. Trustworthiness was rated
Methods Rating of Photos on a ten-point scale. There was no time limit on the rating
process.
If the rater knew the person on the photo, she/he was told
not to rate it.
All ratings of photos were converted to z-scores in order to
eliminate the influence of individual differences among
raters.
_________________________________________________.

Goal: To find out whether it was eye color that affected

perception of trustworthiness and not some other associated
facial feature.

Rating of Photos Method They recolored the eyes on the facial photos from
with Recolored brown to blue and vice versa with Adobe Photoshop SC 3
Eyes software.
The recolored photos were judged for perceived
trustworthiness by a second group of 106 raters (35 males,
71 females). At the end, these were asked if they had noticed
“something unusual” on the photos. None mentioned the
alteration of the color.
C. Circle the letter of the option that best completes each sentence
according to the information provided in the sections “Facial Width-to-
height Ratio” and “Statistics”.

1. In the section “Facial Width-to-height Ratio”, the authors present information

on the _______ of the study.

a. limitations b. challenges c.
methodology
2. Attractiveness and dominance are two _______ considered in the study.

a. sources b. variables c.
subjects

3. The GLM and LME are _______ used to test some variables of the study.

a. instruments b. sources c.
variables

4. Trustworthiness was a _______ of the study calculated and tested for male and
female raters _______.

a. problem / together b. variable /independently c.

limitation / separately

D. Write in the blanks the letter of the most appropriate discursive

function for each segment from the section “Geometric Morphometrics”.
DO NOT REPEAT. THERE IS ONE EXTRA OPTION.

A. Justifying the use of certain D. Stating the purpose for using a

reference information in the study. procedure.

B. Stating a reason for including two E. Stating a limitation derived from the
variables. observations made.

C. Defining a variable considered in the F. Stating the methodology and the

study. purpose of the study.

1. F “Photos of 40 mean and 40 women…between blue-eyed and brown-eyed

faces.” (I)

2. C “Landmarks are points that are anatomically…denote curves and outlines.”

(II)
3. D “This procedure standardized the size of…distances corresponding
landmarks.” (II)

4. B “In addition, we used body height and body…brown-eyed individuals.” (III)

5. E “Because we could not access the raters’ BMIs,…from the same

population.”(III)

E. Using the first three paragraphs of the section “Results”, extract the
information requested.

1. A sentence from paragraph I indicating a similarity in the results for both sexes:

controlling for dominance and attractiveness did eliminate the effect of sex

2. A factor from paragraph II that did not influence the results of the study
significantly:

All raters, irrespective of their own eye color, perceived the

brown-eyed faces as more trustworthy than the blue-eyed ones.

3. A sentence stating a conclusion derived from the idea that recoloring the eyes
did not influence trustworthiness:

Recoloring the eyes from blue to brown or from brown to blue did
not systematically influence perceived trustworthiness

F. Circle the number of two sentences that does not correspond to the
information presented in paragraphs IV to VI of the section “Results.”

1. The shape regression indicated a significant correlation between

trustworthiness and face shape for both males and female faces.

2. A relationship between female shape and perception of trustworthiness was not

clearly observed.

3. The face shape resulted more variable in females than in males.

4. Body height and BMI did not differ between blue-eyed and brown-eyed men
and women.
Part III. POST- READING

Using the information from the sections “Discussion”, “Ethnic

Substructure”, and “Sex Linkage and Sexual Selection” answer the
following questions. Use Spanish. Provide the paragraph(s) number(s)
and line(s) used to support your ideas when appropriate.

1. What kind of conclusion does this text provide? Explain

La conclusión a la que llegó el texto es que las personas con ojos marrones son
percibidas a poseer más confiabilidad que las personas con ojos azules, también
que existen factores que pueden contribuir a esto en mayor o menor medida,
como lo son el sexo y la cara.

2. What explanations does the author propose to explain the second and third
questions derived from the results of the study? Explain

The current association of trustworthy-looking faces with brown eyes may be

explained by genetic linkage disequilibrium

The second explanation comes from the theory hair and eye color diversified
among early Europeans through intense sexual selection of women for novel and
bright color traits