Face It
David Berri, Rob Simmons, Jennifer Van Gilder & Lisle O'Neill
Economics Letters, June 2011, Pages 200-202
Abstract:
We show that attractiveness, as measured by facial symmetry, leads to greater rewards in professional sports. National Football League quarterbacks who are more attractive are paid greater salaries and this premium persists after controlling for player performance.
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About Face: The Association between Facial Appearance and Status Attainment among Military Personnel
Thomas Hochschild & Casey Borch
Sociological Spectrum, May/June 2011, Pages 369-395
Abstract:
This research assesses the extent to which facial appearance is related to occupational status attainment. Through the use of Internet technology, a diverse random sample of research participants viewed Navy boot camp photographs and rated sailors across nine dimensions. Sailors who were rated highly attractive were also thought to be intelligent and to possess leadership qualities. And, consistent with social expectancy theory and status generalization theory, sailors who were rated high across these three traits advanced to higher ranks, and did so more rapidly, than those rated low on these traits. The findings of this study underscore the sociological significance of facial appearance as a means by which people are stratified within social structural contexts.
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Robin Kramer, James King & Robert Ward
Evolution and Human Behavior, May 2011, Pages 179-185
Abstract:
Many aspects of personality are honestly signaled on the human face, as shown by accurate identification of personality traits from static images of unknown faces with neutral expressions. Here, we examined the evolutionary history of this signal system. In four studies, we found that untrained human observers reliably discriminated characteristics related to extraversion solely from nonexpressive facial images of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). In chimpanzees, as in humans, there is therefore information in the static, nonexpressive face that signals aspects of an individual's personality. We suggest that this performance is best explained by shared personality structure and signaling in the two species.
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Looking young for your age: Perceptions of anti-aging actions
Alexander Schoemann & Nyla Branscombe
European Journal of Social Psychology, February 2011, Pages 86-95
Abstract:
Despite the potential benefits of looking young, we predicted that older adults who attempt to look younger than they are would threaten the distinctiveness of young adults' social identity and, for this reason, such "passers" would be evaluated negatively. In three experiments we found that both male and female young adults negatively evaluated older adults who attempt to look younger compared to older adults who do not attempt to do so. Both male and female targets who attempt to look younger were evaluated negatively (Experiment 2), and these negative evaluations were a function of experienced threat to young adults' social identities (Experiment 3). Older adults may attempt to look young to avoid age-based prejudice or conform to existing standards, but doing so can result in negative evaluations by younger people.
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"Beauty Is the Promise of Happiness"?
Daniel Hamermesh & Jason Abrevaya
University of Texas Working Paper, March 2011
Abstract:
We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty raises happiness, with a one standard-deviation change in beauty generating about 0.10 standard deviations of additional satisfaction/happiness among men, 0.12 among women. Accounting for a wide variety of covariates, including those that might be affected by differences in beauty, and particularly effects in the labor and marriage markets, the impact among men is more than halved, among women slightly less than halved. The majority of the effect of beauty on happiness may work through its effects on economic outcomes.
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Sarah Gervais, Theresa Vescio & Jill Allen
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The purpose of this research was to empirically examine the fungibility hypothesis derived from sexual objectification theory. Sexual objectification theorists have suggested that like objects, people, typically women, may be fungible or interchangeable with similar others. Despite its provocative nature and potential adverse psychological consequences, the fungibility hypothesis has yet to be empirically examined. We suggested that women, regardless of body types, but also men with body types that resemble the cultural ideal of attractiveness (e.g., large arms and chests and narrow waists), would be more fungible than men with body types that resemble the cultural average. Participants (n= 66) saw images of average and ideal women and men once before they completed a surprise matching task requiring that they match the bodies and faces that appeared together in the original images. Consistent with hypotheses, we found that women with ideal bodies, women with average bodies, and men with ideal bodies were more fungible (perceivers made more body-face pairing errors) than men with average bodies. Furthermore, it appears that when people are fungible they are interchangeable with people with similar body types. Implications and directions for future research on objectification and fungibility are discussed.
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Sex differences in face processing are mediated by handedness and sexual orientation
Paul Brewster et al.
Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, March 2011, Pages 188-200
Abstract:
Previous research has demonstrated sex differences in face processing at both neural and behavioural levels. The present study examined the role of handedness and sexual orientation as mediators of this effect. We compared the performance of LH (left-handed) and RH (right-handed) heterosexual and homosexual male and female participants on a face recognition memory task. Our main findings were that homosexual males have better face recognition memory than both heterosexual males and homosexual women. We also demonstrate better face processing in women than in men. Finally, LH heterosexual participants had better face recognition than LH homosexual participants and also tended to be better than RH heterosexual participants. These findings are consistent with differences in the organisation and laterality of face-processing mechanisms as a function of sex, handedness, and sexual orientation.
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Sook-Lei Liew, Yina Ma, Shihui Han & Lisa Aziz-Zadeh
PLoS ONE, February 2011, e16901
Abstract:
Human adults typically respond faster to their own face than to the faces of others. However, in Chinese participants, this self-face advantage is lost in the presence of one's supervisor, and they respond faster to their supervisor's face than to their own. While this "boss effect" suggests a strong modulation of self-processing in the presence of influential social superiors, the current study examined whether this effect was true across cultures. Given the wealth of literature on cultural differences between collectivist, interdependent versus individualistic, independent self-construals, we hypothesized that the boss effect might be weaker in independent than interdependent cultures. Twenty European American college students were asked to identify orientations of their own face or their supervisors' face. We found that European Americans, unlike Chinese participants, did not show a "boss effect" and maintained the self-face advantage even in the presence of their supervisor's face. Interestingly, however, their self-face advantage decreased as their ratings of their boss's perceived social status increased, suggesting that self-processing in Americans is influenced more by one's social status than by one's hierarchical position as a social superior. In addition, when their boss's face was presented with a labmate's face, American participants responded faster to the boss's face, indicating that the boss may represent general social dominance rather than a direct negative threat to oneself, in more independent cultures. Altogether, these results demonstrate a strong cultural modulation of self-processing in social contexts and suggest that the very concept of social positions, such as a boss, may hold markedly different meanings to the self across Western and East Asian cultures.
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Productivity or Discrimination? Beauty and the Exams
Giam Pietro Cipriani & Angelo Zago
Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, June 2011, Pages 428-447
Abstract:
Do good looks make people more productive? An impact of looks on earnings has been found in the empirical literature: plain people earn less than average-looking people who in turn earn less than good-looking people. However, an important question remains unanswered: is the impact of beauty due to pure discrimination or productivity? We provide evidence against the hypothesis of Becker-type discrimination stemming from tastes and in favour of productivity-related discrimination.
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The psychology of face construction: Giving evolution a helping hand
Charlie Frowd et al.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, March/April 2011, Pages 195-203
Abstract:
Face construction by selecting individual facial features rarely produces recognisable images. We have been developing a system called EvoFIT that works by the repeated selection and breeding of complete faces. Here, we explored two techniques. The first blurred the external parts of the face, to help users focus on the important central facial region. The second, manipulated an evolved face using psychologically-useful 'holistic' scales: age, masculinity, honesty, etc. Using face construction procedures that mirrored police work, a large benefit emerged for the holistic scales; the benefit of blurring accumulated over the construction process. Performance was best using both techniques: EvoFITs were correctly named 24.5% on average compared to 4.2% for faces constructed using a typical 'feature' system. It is now possible, therefore, to evolve a fairly recognisable composite from a 2 day memory of a face, the norm for real witnesses. A plausible model to account for the findings is introduced.
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Hemispheric Asymmetry in Cross-Race Face Recognition
Joshua Correll, Caroline Lemoine & Debbie Ma
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines two phenomena related to face perception, both of which depend on experience and holistic processing: perceivers process faces more efficiently in the right hemisphere of the brain (a hemispheric asymmetry), and they typically show greater recognition accuracy for members of their racial ingroup (a cross-race recognition deficit). The current study tests the possibility that these two effects are related. If asymmetry depends on experience, it should be particularly evident with (more familiar) ingroup faces; if cross-race recognition relies on holistic processing, it should be particularly evident for faces presented to the right hemisphere. Black and White participants viewed Black and White faces presented to either the left or right visual field. As predicted, participants showed a more pronounced asymmetry for ingroup (rather than outgroup) faces, and cross-race recognition deficits were more pronounced for stimuli presented to the left (rather than the right) visual field.
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Almost Being There: Video Communication with Young Children
Joanne Catherine Tarasuik, Roslyn Galligan & Jordy Kaufman
PLoS ONE, February 2011, e17129
Background: Video communication is increasingly used to connect people around the world. This includes connecting young children with their parents and other relatives during times of separation. An important issue is the extent to which video communication with children can approximate a physical presence such that familial relationships can be truly maintained by this means.
Methodology/Principal Findings: The current study employed an adaptation of the Separation and Reunion Paradigm with children (17 months to 5 years) to investigate the potential for video communication with a parent to afford a sense of proximity and security to children. The protocol involved a free-play session with the parent, followed by two separation-reunion episodes. During one of the separation episodes the parent was 'virtually available' to the child via a video link. Our results revealed three important differences. First, children left alone played longer in a strange room when their parent was virtually available to them compared to when the children were left alone with neither physical nor video contact with their parent. Second, younger participants sought physical contact with their parent less at the end of the video separation episode compared to when they were left entirely alone. Finally, the comparison between free play with video and free play with parent, revealed that the children exhibit a similar level of interactivity with their parent by video as they did in person.
Conclusions/Significance: For young children a video connection can have many of the same effects as a physical presence. This is a significant finding as it is the first such empirical demonstration and indicates considerable promise in video communication as a tool to maintain family relationships when physical presence is not possible.
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Recognition of Novel Faces After Single Exposure is Enhanced During Pregnancy
Marla Anderson & M.D. Rutherford
Evolutionary Psychology, February 2011, Pages 47-60
Abstract:
Protective mechanisms in pregnancy include Nausea and Vomiting in Pregnancy (NVP) (Fessler, 2002; Flaxman and Sherman, 2000), increased sensitivity to health cues (Jones et al., 2005), and increased vigilance to out-group members (Navarette, Fessler, and Eng, 2007). While common perception suggests that pregnancy results in decreased cognitive function, an adaptationist perspective might predict that some aspects of cognition would be enhanced during pregnancy if they help to protect the reproductive investment. We propose that a reallocation of cognitive resources from nonessential to critical areas engenders the cognitive decline observed in some studies. Here, we used a recognition task disguised as a health rating to determine whether pregnancy facilitates face recognition. We found that pregnant women were significantly better at recognizing faces and that this effect was particularly pronounced for own-race male faces. In human evolutionary history, and today, males present a significant threat to females. Thus, enhanced recognition of faces, and especially male faces, during pregnancy may serve a protective function.
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Effect of the observed pupil size on the amygdala of the beholders
Shiori Amemiya & Kuni Ohtomo
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Among a range of cognitive functions of the amygdala, recent studies suggest its involvement in identification of the pupil size. To further address its role, we investigated the response of the amygdala to human and cat faces with varied pupil size, taking into account the effect of the gender and subjective attractiveness ratings. Twenty-seven subjects underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while viewing faces with large and small pupils. Large pupil faces induced increased activation in the amygdala, without interactions with either subject or stimuli gender, although no equivalent activation differences were seen for cat face stimuli. The activation differences were irrespective of the perceived attractiveness, and without explicit knowledge about the manipulation of the pupil size. These data support the idea that the amygdala is responsive not only to explicit or implicit fear, abhorrence or preference, but also to other elements that might suggest heightened vigilance of biologically relevant stimuli, which does not necessarily require subjective awareness.
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Caucasian Infants Scan Own- and Other-Race Faces Differently
Andrea Wheeler et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2011, e18621
Abstract:
Young infants are known to prefer own-race faces to other race faces and recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. However, it is entirely unclear as to whether infants also attend to different parts of own- and other-race faces differently, which may provide an important clue as to how and why the own-race face recognition advantage emerges so early. The present study used eye tracking methodology to investigate whether 6- to 10-month-old Caucasian infants (N = 37) have differential scanning patterns for dynamically displayed own- and other-race faces. We found that even though infants spent a similar amount of time looking at own- and other-race faces, with increased age, infants increasingly looked longer at the eyes of own-race faces and less at the mouths of own-race faces. These findings suggest experience-based tuning of the infant's face processing system to optimally process own-race faces that are different in physiognomy from other-race faces. In addition, the present results, taken together with recent own- and other-race eye tracking findings with infants and adults, provide strong support for an enculturation hypothesis that East Asians and Westerners may be socialized to scan faces differently due to each culture's conventions regarding mutual gaze during interpersonal communication.
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When the Whites of the Eyes are Red: A Uniquely Human Cue
Robert Provine et al.
Ethology, May 2011, Pages 395-399
Abstract:
Redness of the human eye is produced primarily by vasodilation of blood vessels of the conjunctiva, a membrane positioned over the sclera, the eye's tough, white outer layer. Reddened eyes are a uniquely human cue because other primates lack the background of white sclera necessary to make the reddened conjunctiva visible. This study evaluates red eyes as a social and biological cue by contrasting the perception of eyes with normal 'whites' with copies of those eyes whose sclera were reddened by digital editing. Individuals with reddened sclera were perceived as sadder, less healthy, and less attractive than individuals with normal (white) sclera. Scleral whiteness joins such cues as smooth skin, long, lustrous hair, symmetry, averageness and sexually dimorphic traits as signs of health, beauty and reproductive fitness.