Affective Touch Shapes the Sense of Trustworthiness of Visually Presented Faces

The present study aimed to explore if social judgments are influenced by concomitant somato-sensory stimulation. 40 participants were asked to judge 30 faces for trustworthiness in two different “comfort” conditions in both a between- and a within-subjects paradigm. Faces were presented very briefly and were specifically selected to look: trustworthy, untrustworthy or neutral. Findings suggest an overall higher tendency for participants to evaluate faces as trustworthy in the physically comfortable compared to the uncomfortable condition. Moreover, the increase in trustworthy responses was affected by the type of face, being larger for neutral than for untrustworthy and trustworthy faces. More generally, our findings provide evidence that prior sensory experience can influence unrelated social-emotional evaluations based on first impression. The possible mechanisms underlying this effect are discussed.