Interoceptive Accuracy, Metacognition, and Facial Trustworthiness Perception Across the Adult Lifespan

Abstract Older adults often exhibit more positive impressions when forming trustworthiness impressions based on facial appearance. These judgements influence social decisions in later interpersonal interactions and are thought to put older adults at greater risk of victimization. One overlooked mechanism of age-related differences in facial appearance-based trustworthiness impressions is interoception, the perception of one’s own bodily signals. Interoception is important for well-calibrated trustworthiness perceptions because somatic signals, or “gut-based” affective responses, can help inform who is trustworthy versus ill-intentioned. This study examined how individuals’ interoceptive accuracy and their interoceptive metacognitive ability moderated associations between age and facial trustworthiness perceptions. During an in-lab session, 104 participants (aged 18–83) completed a facial trustworthiness judgement task and a heartbeat detection (HBD) task to measure their interoceptive accuracy (measured as d’ ) and interoceptive metacognition (measured as metacognitive sensitivity and metacognitive efficiency). We found that, as age increased, participants with lower interoceptive accuracy were more likely to rate prototypically untrustworthy facial stimuli as more trustworthy. We also found that among those with high interoceptive metacognition, older participants were more likely to rate untrustworthy stimuli as more trustworthy, and trustworthy stimuli as more untrustworthy. Results from this study suggest bodily cues may provide information about others’ trustworthiness, and at older age, those who do not perceive their own bodily signals accurately are also likely to make errors in interpersonal decisions.