ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews very briefly selected aspects of the social perception of faces, in order to emphasise the variety and complexity of the different inferences which may be drawn from varying facial patterns. Faces serve as signals for underlying emotional states through their portrayal of facial expression; the perception of lip and tongue movements helps to disambiguate speech, and a variety of other facial gestures may serve both affective and communicative functions during personal interaction. Nevertheless, despite this possible evolutionary interdependence of the different signalling functions of the face, there is good evidence, that the recognition of facial identity is a process which proceeds independently from the recognition of facial expression and facial speech. Expression perception, perceived attractiveness and liking, stereotypical attribution, and crosscultural comparisons of facial gestures are among the many topics in social psychology which involve research on aspects of face processing.
