Your worldview might dictate how you perceive neutral faces

People who view the world as an inherently dangerous place consistently overestimate the likelihood of specific threats, from violent crimes to animal attacks. A new series of psychological evaluations reveals that this broad worldview also leads individuals to perceive the neutral faces of strangers as less trustworthy and more aggressive. The findings were published in the Journal of Individual Differences.

Psychologists categorize the fundamental ways people perceive their environment into a framework called primal world beliefs. These primal beliefs represent 26 broad dimensions that describe how an individual interprets reality, such as seeing the world as beautiful, abundant, or just. These beliefs cluster into four higher-order categories, one of which involves viewing reality as generally safe versus generally dangerous.

Researchers Nicholas C. G. Kerry and Jeremy D. W. Clifton wanted to understand how a generalized belief about danger influences the way people react to specific, everyday situations. Prior research has established that individuals who believe the world is inherently just will often perceive specific situations, like a workplace or a sports game, as fairer. Kerry and Clifton aimed to test if a similar pattern exists for dangerous world beliefs.

The researchers designed four studies to see whether individuals who see reality as generally threatening consistently overestimate objective physical risks and view unknown people with heightened suspicion. They wanted to determine if holding a broad belief that the world is dangerous translates to overestimating specific, proximate threats. They also sought to rule out alternative explanations, such as the possibility that clinical anxiety or underlying personality traits drive these threat perceptions.

In the first study, the researchers recruited 457 American adults through an online platform. Participants completed a survey measuring their primal world beliefs and then estimated the statistical frequency of 12 real-world dangers in the United States, such as the rate of murders, assaults, and bear attacks. The researchers also measured the participants’ personality traits and recent symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The researchers found that participants with a high dangerous world belief overestimated the prevalence of these specific threats at much higher rates than those with a low dangerous world belief. On average, individuals in the highest quintile for dangerous world beliefs estimated the incidence of these events to be more than four times higher than individuals in the lowest quintile. This broad belief predicted risk estimates better than a person’s underlying anxiety, depression, or general personality traits.

The second study expanded on these results to see if this heightened perception of risk applied to diseases and positive events. The researchers surveyed 881 American adults, asking them to estimate the likelihood of physical dangers, health risks like strokes or infectious illnesses, and positive events like winning money. Participants were randomly assigned to estimate these probabilities for themselves or for the average American.

Individuals with a strong dangerous world belief consistently predicted higher risks for physical dangers, just as they did in the first study. They showed only a weak tendency to overestimate health and disease risks, and they did not overestimate the likelihood of positive or neutral events. The results were similar whether participants estimated risks for themselves or for others, indicating a generalized pattern of threat perception rather than a specific personal fear.

For the third study, the researchers tested how dangerous world beliefs influence the perception of novel social situations. A group of 599 American adults viewed photographs of Caucasian strangers with neutral facial expressions. The participants rated the faces on various emotional and behavioral traits, including warmth, trustworthiness, and the likelihood that the person might commit a crime.

As part of the third study’s design, participants were randomly assigned to a threat condition or a control condition. In the threat condition, the photographs were accompanied by text claiming the person in the image had committed a crime. The researchers wanted to see if contextual cues would interact with dangerous world beliefs to amplify threat appraisals.

Participants who viewed the world as a dangerous place rated the neutral faces as less trustworthy, less warm, and less happy. They also perceived the strangers as more aggressive and more likely to pose a threat to society. The contextual manipulation of telling participants that the targets were criminals did not result in a statistically significant interaction with dangerous world beliefs. Once again, the participants’ generalized belief about the world predicted negative social evaluations better than their reported levels of anxiety or depression.

The fourth study sought to replicate the facial evaluation findings across different racial groups. The researchers recruited 979 American adults, evenly split between Black and White participants, who evaluated a series of neutral Black and White faces. The survey structure mirrored the previous experiment, focusing on traits like trustworthiness and perceived threat.

The evaluations matched the previous results, with dangerous world belief heavily associated with seeing societal threat and crime risk in the neutral faces. It was also linked to lower ratings of trust and warmth. In some instances, the association between dangerous world beliefs and evaluations of traits like warmth and happiness was stronger among Black participants than White participants, regardless of the target’s race.

While these four studies demonstrate a strong link between generalized worldviews and specific threat appraisals, the researchers noted several caveats. The data are cross-sectional and rely on surveys taken at a single point in time. Because of this, it is not possible to prove that holding a dangerous world belief directly causes someone to overestimate risks. It remains possible that an unknown third variable drives both the broad belief and the specific threat perceptions.

Another caveat is that the effects were observed in relatively ambiguous scenarios, such as guessing statistics or judging the faces of complete strangers. A person’s generalized belief about danger might not influence their judgment in environments that provide distinct safety cues, established relationships, or readily accessible facts. The researchers also found no evidence that dangerous world beliefs actually correlated with an individual’s history of participating in real-world risky behaviors, such as extreme sports or high-risk investments.

Future research will need to explore how these generalized beliefs might influence high-stakes professional decision-making. Medical professionals who view the world as highly dangerous might make different judgments regarding treatments than those who see the world as safe. Similarly, judges or jurors with high dangerous world beliefs might evaluate criminal sentencing in a more risk-averse manner.

Psychologists also hope to design experiments that attempt to alter a person’s primal world beliefs. If behavioral interventions can successfully change a person’s overarching worldview, scientists could test whether that shift leads to a lasting reduction in how they perceive everyday threats.

The study, “From Bear Attacks to Neutral Faces: Dangerous World Belief Predicts Specific Appraisals of Threat,” was authored by Nicholas C. G. Kerry and Jeremy D. W. Clifton.