Ben-Gurion University researchers create first Israeli Faces Database

BEER-SHEVA, Israel, June 18, 2025 -- Human faces and their representations play a key role in most social interactions. Consequently, face images are widely used as stimuli across psychological and social science research. However, most available face databases primarily represent Western, predominantly White populations, and the ratings given to these faces from similarly Western raters, raising concerns about the generalizability of findings derived from such potentially unrepresentative stimuli sets.  

Now, a team led by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researcher Dr. Niv Reggev, in collaboration with Profs. Carmel Sofer, Bat-Sheva Hadad, and Tal Moran have introduced the Israeli Face Database (IFD): a novel database presenting face images of real individuals from an ethnically diverse population underrepresented in psychological research on face perception—people residing in Israel. 

The database was just introduced in Behavior Research Methods (https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-025-02723-1)  

The IFD features multiple highly controlled images per face identity, presenting several facial expressions. Additionally, they provide detailed demographic data on the face identities, their diversity, and expression validation data rated by Israeli participants. The database further includes norming data for a host of the most common social perceptions in the literature (including dominance, empathy, etc.) rated by both Israeli and U.S.-based participants.  

Their analysis revealed that judgments of IFD faces were broadly consistent across cultures, highlighting the validity of these faces. Complementarily, Complementarily, perceivers from the two cultures varied in rating the perceived typicality, attractiveness, and perceived ethnic diversity of the faces.  

"This database addresses a lacuna in the field by including individuals from a highly mixed non-Western population. Approaching the gap through the intersection of social psychology and traditional face research, the IFD has strong psychometric properties while also allowing researchers to capture nuanced cultural and individual differences in face perception. With more face identities already being introduced into the database, making it one of the biggest natural face databases, we propose that the IFD can serve as a valuable tool for all researchers conducting social and cognitive psychological research," explains Dr. Reggev.