The influence of face similarity in the case of the perception of morphed self-face

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine if differences in behavioral effects in terms of facial self-recognition, compared to other identity recognition (familiar, strange) exist. Morphed versions of three facial identities were used in the experiment. The subject's own face was morphed with an unknown identity. A face of a highly familar person and of a stranger were also morphed in the same manner. This morphing procedure was repeated six times for each identity, but with six different unknown faces, in which three of the unknown faces were rated as being similar and the other three as dissimilar. The reaction times and categorical boundaries were then measured. The major finding of the study was that there were significant delayed mean reaction times for the morphed imges of version "self versus similarly rated unknown faces" in contrast to the images of "self versus dissimilarly rated unknown faces" only. No significant differences were found in any of the other morphed versions. The authors interpret this result as being uniquely associated to the facial self-recognition and suggest that this association might be related to the "self effect".