The Traitors: Study reveals why it’s so hard for players to know who to trust ahead of series final
If you’re a Traitors fan screaming at the TV telling faithful contestants they’re stupid for trusting the enemy – scientists have news for you.
The process of how we judge trustworthiness in social situations is different to what was once thought, they say – and can be misleading.
Researchers at the University of Aberdeen say their findings could reveal why the traitors are proving so elusive.
In the game, the faithful players must try to eliminate the traitors, while the traitors try to evade detection and pick off the faithful. And all the while, every player is trying to convince the others they are “100% faithful”.
The study found that when somebody meets a group of people, they judge their trustworthiness by combining their facial features together into one “composite face”.
‘There’s just something about them I don’t trust’
Rather than meticulously examining each single individual face, we blend the trustworthiness impressions of all the faces to get the gist of the group, according to the research.
This process – termed “ensemble perception” – happens in about a quarter of a second, the researchers found.
It is thought to be useful as it allows people to quickly extract perceived social information.
But it can also take us down the wrong path in the blink of an eye (take note, faithfuls).
“Trustworthiness impressions of a group can potentially influence our behaviour towards that group,” researcher and postgraduate student Fiammetta Marini said.
“But it is important to remember that we are only talking about facial features. Maybe what it really shows is that we should focus on what people do as opposed to judgements about whether we like the look of them.
“This can explain why people may say things like ‘there’s just something about them I don’t trust’ or ‘I don’t trust any of them’.
“And yes – it may explain why the traitors are proving so elusive.”
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The Traitors contestant Harry. Pic: Studio Lambert/Mark Mainz/BBC
Traitor or trustworthy? Don’t be fooled by a ‘surprised’ face
We subconsciously judge if someone is trustworthy based on their facial characteristics, Ms Marini said – despite these markers not being accurate or reliable.
For example, high eyebrows that seem “surprised looking” and a U-shaped mouth are usually seen as trustworthy, while close-set eyes or lower eyebrows are not.
These impressions of trustworthiness are not accurate enough to be relied on as foundations for real-world decision-making, Ms Marini said.
She added: “Regardless – we make these split-second judgements and they have a big impact in our everyday lives. Even if these impressions are not always accurate they invariably shape our social behaviour.”
The study, published in the journal Cognition, found that split-second judgements could have implications for witness identification line-ups in police investigations.
The findings may also be applied to understanding how people judge the trustworthiness of members of a political party.
Entertainment
Sir Rod Stewart ‘devastated’ after cancelling more US concerts as he recovers from flu
Sir Rod Stewart says he is devastated to have to cancel a series of US concerts, blaming lingering flu for the decision.
It affects four shows in Nevada, along with a further two in California, which he plans to reschedule.
They were due to take place over the next eight days.
“So sorry my friends. I’m devastated and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience to my fans. I’ll be back on stage and will see you soon,” he wrote in a message on Instagram.
Sir Rod, 80, has been struggling to recover from flu and this week had already cancelled two concerts at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.
On Wednesday, he disclosed that his doctor had “ordered” him to take “a bit more rest”.
The star is in the midst of his epic One Last Time Tour.
Sir Rod, who was recently put on vocal rest, is due to play the legends slot at Glastonbury later this month.
In May, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the American Music Awards (AMAs).
Sir Rod performing at the 2025 American Music Awards in Las Vegas. Pic: Reuters
In a sign of how seriously the singer takes his health, last month he was also spotted in Italy attempting to avoid conversations to preserve his voice.
He wore a message attached to a lanyard which read: “Sorry. Cannot talk. Having vocal rest.”
In 2024, he promised he would not retire but confirmed his 2025 European and North American shows would bring an end to his “large-scale world tours”.
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The performer, best known for songs including Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?, Every Beat Of My Heart, and Maggie May, said he plans to focus on more intimate venues instead.
Sir Rod has faced other health challenges in the past.
In May 2000, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had surgery. In 2017, he underwent successful treatment for prostate cancer.
More often than not, the inclusion of women in an action film is shaped by the male gaze, the tropes, the stereotypical backstory and/or the unnecessary physique-revealing scenes connected to it.
“That’s a pet peeve of mine,” director Len Wiseman tells Sky News in an interview for his new John Wick spin-off starring Ana de Armas.
“I think a lot of times you see it’s overly sexualized or there’s not a realism to it, and it is important to me that [this was] approached from a female [perspective] that can be labelled: ‘A woman is strong to begin with’. I think there can be some kind of pandering in certain ways that I think is too far.”
Wiseman started his career with the female-led action film franchise Underworld starring his former partner Kate Beckinsale before directing Die Hard 4.0, Total Recall and Sleepy Hollow.
From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina serves as a spin-off to the John Wick films and is set between the events of the third and fourth movies.
It follows a young trainee assassin who looks to be the next world-renowned assassin in the film universe.
“We never wanted to go as far as Eve looking like we were doing a female John Wick. Eve is Eve and is a woman… and it’s a woman in a man’s world,” says de Armas.
“That phrase ‘fight like a girl’, we wanted that to come across as something really empowering and really pull from there. That is a motivation for her. That has been said before in a derogatory way or as something diminishing.”
De Armas insists she didn’t want to be a ‘female John Wick’. Pic: Murray Close/Lionsgate
Wiseman and de Armas both say that while they wanted Eve to be strong, they also wanted her to feel every moment of the battle. If there are choreographed fight scenes or flashy action moves, she feels them.
“I wanted her to struggle,” explains de Armas, detailing how she consistently asked for her to look more dishevelled as the film progresses.
“It didn’t come from a place of I need to prove myself, I don’t need to prove myself to anybody, but I wanted to do that from the moment we started talking about the script, we even brought on board a female writer, because it was important for me to have that.”
De Armas, similar to her soon-to-be co-star Tom Cruise, relished in undertaking the more difficult stunts and wore the bruises and marks from them like badges of honour.
Playing Eve involved stunts and even some bruises. Pic: Larry D Horricks/Lionsgate
The actress would even send photos of the markings the following day to Wiseman proudly as she jokes: “I just wanted to keep him posted, you know, on how my body was at the end of the day.”
The film was shot practically, with the explosions and countless action surprises for film fans happening on set repeatedly.
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When asked about her toughest stunt to execute, without hesitation, she mentions a scene which included prop grenades.
“All the debris and everything that was flying with those grenades were real, so most of the dust and the little things flying were getting in my eyes, and I just could not open my eyes during the scene. So in between takes, the medics were like just rinsing my eyes with some water.”
With a film set around changing the meaning of ‘fight like a girl’, de Armas says she has a clear definition of it now: “Be yourself and make people gravitate around you and your rules. You make your own rules.”
From The World Of John Wick: Ballerina is in cinemas now.
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