My research interests revolve around the reasons that people place trust in other individuals. Through the use of economic games, and more recently the manipulation of attributes of the face, I hope to discover the relationship between appearance and individual differences in the way that people place trust in another individual whilst in various different circumstances (e.g. being taught by them, having information conveyed by them as a peer, or by competing with them). As well as the characteristic of trustworthiness, I am also looking to see how an individual's own social characteristics (such as warmth, attractiveness and empathy) affect their face preferences and interactions with other individuals who posses the same, and different, social characteristics.
In addition to this, I have an interest in human-computer interactions and the things that make people more likely to interact with digital media.
My previous studies have all been carried out at the University of Aberdeen, beginning with a degree in Computing Science, and then in Psychology where as an Undegraduate I entered the Face Reseach Lab and completed my thesis on the integration of information between health and sexual dimorphism in the formation of face preferences.
(310 kB)FG Smith, BC Jones & LM DeBruine (in press). Individual differences in empathizing and systemizing predict variation in face preferences.Personality and Individual Differences. [abstract»»]
(154 kB)J Vukovic, BC Jones, DR Feinberg, LM DeBruine, FG Smith, LLM Welling & AC Little (in press). Variation in perceptions of physical dominance and trustworthiness predicts individual differences in the effect of relationship context on women's preferences for masculine pitch in men's voices.British Journal of Psychology. [abstract»»]
(342 kB)LM DeBruine, BC Jones, FG Smith & AC Little (2010). Are attractive men's faces masculine or feminine? The importance of controlling confounds in face stimuli.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(3): 751-758. [abstract»»]
LM DeBruine, FG Smith, BC Jones & SC Roberts (2007). Kin Recognition Signals in Adult Faces.Face Recognition Research Seminar in Aberdeen, UK. April 2007. [abstract»»]
LM DeBruine, FG Smith, BC Jones, SC Roberts & M Petrie (2007). Kin Recognition Signals in Adult Faces.Human Behavior and Evolution Society in Williamsburg, VA, USA. May 2007. [abstract»»]
CD Watkins, LM DeBruine, FG Smith, BC Jones, J Vukovic & PJ Fraccaro (2010). Like father, like self: Emotional closeness to father, but not mother, predicts women's preferences for self-resemblance in opposite-sex, but not same-sex, faces.Human Behavior and Evolution Society in Eugene, Oregon. June 2010. [abstract»»]
FG Smith, BC Jones, AC Little, LM DeBruine, LLM Welling, J Vukovic & CA Conway (2008). Individual differences in the effect of relationship context on women's preferences for sexual dimorphism in male face shape.Human Behavior and Evolution Society in Kyoto University, Japan. June 2008. [abstract»»]
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