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The sibling familiarity effect: Is within‐person facial variability shared across siblings?

The sibling familiarity effect: Is within‐person facial variability shared across siblings? Thumbnail


Abstract

Humans are experts at familiar face recognition, but poor at unfamiliar face recognition. Familiarity is created when a face is encountered across varied conditions, but the way in which a person’s appearance varies is identity-specific, so familiarity with one identity does not benefit recognition of other individuals. However, the faces of biological siblings share structural similarities, so we explored whether the benefits of familiarity are shared across siblings. Results show that familiarity with one half of a sibling pair improves kin detection (experiment 1), and that unfamiliar face matching is more accurate when targets are the siblings of familiar versus unfamiliar individuals (experiment 2). PCA applied to facial images of celebrities and their siblings demonstrates that faces are generally better reconstructed in the principal components of a same-sex sibling than those of an unrelated individual. When we encounter the unfamiliar sibling of someone we already know, our pre-existing representation of their familiar relation may usefully inform processing of the unfamiliar face. This can benefit both kin detection and identity processing, but the benefits are constrained by the degree to which facial variability is shared.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 7, 2021
Online Publication Date Jul 7, 2021
Publication Date 2022-02
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal British Journal of Psychology
Print ISSN 0007-1269
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 113
Issue 1
Pages 327-345
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12517
Keywords General Psychology
Publisher URL https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjop.12517

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