The specificity of interpersonal perception in terms of presentation of the image of a whole face and a «split face» on the example of perception of pictorial portraits

The article presents a study of the specificity of perception of expression of the whole and fragmented (divided into left and right half) face made on the example of the perception of pictorial portraits. The data obtained in the study are fully consistent with previously obtained results of the similar study of perception of facsimiles (Artemtseva, 2003, Barabanschikov, Boldyrev, 2007; Barabanschikov, Zhegallo, 2013). The right and the left side of the face and the image of a whole face have their own expressive potential, which is reflected in the use by observer of different individual psychological characteristics in their description. The expression of a whole face often has a contradictory character with overly intensified emotions and is not a simple sum of the characteristics that are used in the description of the right and left halves of the face. Thus, perception of expression of a whole face and of a “split face” brings up several different patterns of personality. The similarity of the experimental data, obtained at different stimulus material (portraits and images), speaks about the invariance of perception of human face, regardless of the method of its representation.