To which world regions does the valence-dominance model of social perception apply?

Over the last ten years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence-dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgments of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries, and 11,481 participants. When we used Oosterhof’s and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence-dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative strategy that allowed for a more optimal number of correlated latent factors, we observed much less generalization. These results underscore how each analysis strategy embeds substantive assumptions that can strongly influence theoretical conclusions.

Preprint and preregistration available at https://psyarxiv.com/n26dy. Open analysis code available at https://osf.io/87rbg/. Open material available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25582810/.