The Oxford Handbook of Face Perception

The human face is unique among social stimuli in conveying such a variety of different characteristics. A person's identity, sex, race, age, emotional state, focus of attention, facial speech patterns, and attractiveness are all detected and interpreted with relative ease from the face. Humans also display a surprising degree of consistency in the extent to which personality traits, such as trustworthiness and likeability, are attributed to faces. In the past thirty years, face perception has become an area of major interest within psychology, with a rapidly expanding research base. Yet until now, there has been no comprehensive reference work bringing together this ever growing body of research.

The Oxford Handbook of Face Perception is the most comprehensive and commanding review of the field ever published. It looks at the functional and neural mechanisms underlying the perception, representation, and interpretation of facial characteristics, such as identity, expression, eye gaze, attractiveness, personality, and race. It examines the development of these processes, their neural correlates in both human and non-human primates, congenital and acquired disorders resulting from their breakdown, and the theoretical and computational frameworks for their underlying mechanisms. With chapters by an international team of leading authorities from the brain sciences, the book is a landmark publication on face perception.

For anyone looking for the definitive text on this burgeoning field, this is the essential book.

Andy Calder, MRC Senior researcher for the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. Gillian Rhodes is a professor for the School of Psychology at the University of Western Australia. Mark Johnson is a professor for the Department of Psychology and the director of Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at Birkbeck College, University of London. Jim Haxby is a professor for the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Darmouth College.