The Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology

The present study investigated whether and how interpersonal closeness affects self-other face discrimination. Before the experiment, faces of each participant and her close friend were being taken as stimuli. Two types of morphed face image were created, namely (i) self-friend image which was merged each participant’s face with the close friend’s face and (ii) self-unknown image which was merged each participant’s face with an unknown female person’s face. Two experimental sessions were performed using these two types of morphed image and participants were asked to indicate whether the presented image was their own face or others’ face. The result of PSE (Point of Subjective Equality) indicates that higher ratio of self in the morphed image is needed to answer “self” in the self-unknown condition compared to the self-friend condition.