ABSTRACT
Despite considerable evidence indicating that our perceptions of people's psychological attributes are strongly tied to their facial appearance (See McArthur, 1982, and Berry & McArthur, 1986, for reviews of this research), there has been almost no systematic and theoretically guided research on this topic. Brewer's model, with its emphasis on pictoliteral representations of people is a refreshing exception. However, it does not quench my thirst for a clear elucidation of this issue. The reason is that Brewer's model, like its predecessors, is concerned primarily with the processes of impression formation, and little attention is paid to the contents of these impressions, to their origins, or to the stimulus information on which they are based. The purpose of the present commentary is to pose some questions which are raised by a concern with these latter three issues.
