For clear and unambiguous social
categories, person perception occurs quite accurately from
minimal cues. This article addresses the perception of an
ambiguous
social category (male sexual
...orientation) from minimal cues. Across 5 studies, the
authors examined individuals' actual and self-assessed
accuracy when judging male sexual orientation from faces and
facial features. Although participants were able to make
accurate judgments from multiple facial features (i.e.,
hair, the eyes, and the mouth area), their perceived
accuracy was calibrated with their actual accuracy only when
making judgments based on hairstyle, a controllable feature.
These findings provide evidence that suggests different
processes for extracting social category information during
perception: explicit judgments based on obvious cues
(hairstyle) and intuitive judgments based on nonobvious cues
(information from the eyes and mouth area). Differences in
the accuracy of judgments based on targets' controllability
and perceivers' awareness of cues provides insight into the
processes underlying intuitive predictions and intuitive
judgments.
Voices convey important social information about an individual’s identity, including gender. This is especially relevant to transgender individuals, who cite voice alteration as a primary goal of the ...gender alignment process. Although the voice is a primary target of testosterone therapy among female-to-male (FTM) trans people, little research has explored the effects of such changes on their psychological well-being. Here, we investigated how FTMs’ vocal gender related to their well-being. A total of 77 FTMs (
M
age
= 25.45 years, SD = 6.77) provided voice samples and completed measures of their well-being and psychological health. An independent group of 32 naïve raters (
M
age
= 22.16 years, SD = 8.21) subsequently rated the voice samples for masculinity. We found that FTMs whose voices sounded more congruent with their experienced gender (i.e., sounded more masculine) reported greater well-being (better life satisfaction, quality of life, and self-esteem; lower levels of anxiety and depression) than FTMs with less gender congruent (i.e., more feminine) voices (
β
= .48). The convergence between outwardly perceived vocal gender and gender identity brought about through hormone replacement therapy may therefore support greater well-being for FTMs.
Researchers have recently shown increasing interest in assessments of trustworthiness, devoting much attention to whether trustworthiness can be detected from a person’s facial appearance. This ...question has been investigated along diverse behavioral dimensions, using a wide variety of targets, and with great inconsistency in results. Here, we call for greater precision in defining trustworthiness. We review various subdomains of trustworthiness perception and argue that developing a more highly specified taxonomy of trustworthiness will allow for better predictions about when trustworthiness can be judged on the basis of appearance, for more precision in estimating how accurate people are in making such judgments, and for more accurate information regarding the specific cues relevant to inferring trustworthiness in each domain.
Perceivers can accurately judge a face’s sexual orientation, but the perceptual mechanisms mediating this remain obscure. The authors hypothesized that stereotypes casting gays and lesbians as gender ...“inverts,” in cultural circulation for a century and a half, lead perceivers to use gendered facial cues to infer sexual orientation. Using computer-generated faces, Study 1 showed that as two facial dimensions (shape and texture) became more gender inverted, targets were more likely to be judged as gay or lesbian. Study 2 showed that real faces appearing more gender inverted were more likely to be judged as gay or lesbian. Furthermore, the stereotypic use of gendered cues influenced the accurate judgment of sexual orientation. Although using gendered cues increased the accuracy of sexual orientation judgments overall, Study 3 showed that judgments were reliably mistaken for targets that countered stereotypes. Together, the findings demonstrate that perceivers utilize gendered facial cues to glean another’s sexual orientation, and this influences the accuracy or error of judgments.
Objective
People gather important social information from subtle nonverbal cues. Given that one's attachment style can meaningfully affect the quality of one's relationships, we investigated whether ...people could perceive men's and women's attachment styles from photos of their neutral faces.
Method
In two studies, we measured targets' attachment styles then asked participants (total N = 893) to judge the male and female targets' attachment anxiety and avoidance from photos of their neutral faces (total N = 331) and to report their own attachment anxiety and avoidance.
Results
Participants detected men's attachment style from face photos significantly better than chance in an initial exploratory study and in a preregistered replication but did not consistently detect women's attachment style from their face photos. Moreover, participants' own attachment style biased these first impressions: Individuals with greater attachment anxiety viewed others as more anxiously attached.
Conclusions
People can detect some hints of unacquainted others' attachment styles from their faces but their own anxious attachment can bias these judgments.
Here, we investigate how facial trustworthiness—a socially influential appearance variable—interrelates with antisocial behavior across adolescence and middle adulthood. Specifically, adolescents who ...look untrustworthy may be treated with suspicion, leading to antisocial behavior through expectancy effects. Alternatively, early antisocial behaviors may promote an untrustworthy appearance over time (Dorian Gray effect). We tested these expectancy and Dorian Gray effects in a longitudinal study that followed 206 at-risk boys (90% White) from ages 13–38 years. Parallel process piecewise growth models indicated that facial trustworthiness (assessed from photographs taken prospectively) declined during adolescence and then stabilized in adulthood. Consistent with expectancy effects, initial levels of facial trustworthiness were negatively related to increases in antisocial behavior during adolescence and also during adulthood. Additionally, higher initial levels of antisocial behavior predicted relative decreases in facial trustworthiness across adolescence. Adolescent boys’ facial appearance may therefore both encourage and reflect antisocial behavior over time.
Beyond categories: Perceiving sexual attraction from faces Bjornsdottir, R. Thora; Cheso, Diana; Rule, Nicholas O.
The British journal of psychology,
February 2022, 2022-Feb, 2022-02-00, 20220201, Letnik:
113, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Although people can categorize others’ sexual orientation (e.g., gay/lesbian vs. straight) from their facial appearance, not everyone defines their sexual orientation categorically. Indeed, many ...individuals within the same sexual orientation category experience different degrees of own‐ and other‐gender attraction. Moving beyond sexual orientation categories, we found that perceivers’ judgments of individuals’ sexual attraction correlated with those individuals’ self‐reported degrees of attraction to women and men. Similar to past work on sexual orientation categories, facial affect cued sexual attraction in men whereas gender typicality cued sexual attraction in women. Moreover, asking participants to categorize the targets as ‘not straight’ versus ‘straight’ revealed a linear pattern distinct from the discrete category thresholds typical of other social groups (e.g., race). Facial appearance thus reveals nuances in sexual attraction that support sexual orientation categorizations. These findings refine understanding of social categorization more broadly.
Academic life is full of learning, excitement, and discovery. However, academics also experience professional challenges at various points in their career, including repeated rejection, impostor ...syndrome, and burnout. These negative experiences are rarely talked about publicly, creating a sense of loneliness and isolation for people who presume they are the only ones affected by such setbacks. However, nearly everyone has these experiences at one time or another; therefore, talking about them should be a normal part of academic life. The goal of this article is to explore and destigmatize the common experiences of rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout by sharing a collection of short personal stories from scholars at various stages of their careers with various types of academic positions. Josh Ackerman, Kate Sweeny, and Ludwin Molina discuss how they have dealt with repeated rejection. Linda Tropp, Nick Rule, and Brooke Vick share experiences with impostor syndrome. Finally, Bertram Gawronski, Lisa Jaremka, Molly Metz, and Will Ryan discuss how they have experienced burnout.
The study of social categorization has largely been confined to examining groups distinguished by perceptually obvious cues. Yet many ecologically important group distinctions are less clear, ...permitting insights into the general processes involved in person perception. Although religious group membership is thought to be perceptually ambiguous, folk beliefs suggest that Mormons and non-Mormons can be categorized from their appearance. We tested whether Mormons could be distinguished from non-Mormons and investigated the basis for this effect to gain insight to how subtle perceptual cues can support complex social categorizations.
Participants categorized Mormons' and non-Mormons' faces or facial features according to their group membership. Individuals could distinguish between the two groups significantly better than chance guessing from their full faces and faces without hair, with eyes and mouth covered, without outer face shape, and inverted 180°; but not from isolated features (i.e., eyes, nose, or mouth). Perceivers' estimations of their accuracy did not match their actual accuracy. Exploration of the remaining features showed that Mormons and non-Mormons significantly differed in perceived health and that these perceptions were related to perceptions of skin quality, as demonstrated in a structural equation model representing the contributions of skin color and skin texture. Other judgments related to health (facial attractiveness, facial symmetry, and structural aspects related to body weight) did not differ between the two groups. Perceptions of health were also responsible for differences in perceived spirituality, explaining folk hypotheses that Mormons are distinct because they appear more spiritual than non-Mormons.
Subtle markers of group membership can influence how others are perceived and categorized. Perceptions of health from non-obvious and minimal cues distinguished individuals according to their religious group membership. These data illustrate how the non-conscious detection of very subtle differences in others' appearances supports cognitively complex judgments such as social categorization.
Previous research has shown that perceivers can accurately extract information about perceptually ambiguous group memberships from facial information alone. For example, people demonstrate ...above-chance accuracy in categorizing political ideology from faces. Further, they ascribe particular personality traits to faces according to political party (e.g., Republicans are dominant and mature, Democrats are likeable and trustworthy). Here, we report three studies that replicated and extended these effects. In Study 1a, we provide evidence that, in addition to showing accuracy in categorization, politically-conservative participants expressed a bias toward categorizing targets as outgroup members. In Study 1b, we replicate this relationship with a larger sample and a stimulus set consisting of faces of professional politicians. In Study 2, we find that trait ascriptions based on target political affiliation are moderated by perceiver political ideology. Specifically, although Democrats are stereotyped as more likeable and trustworthy, conservative participants rated faces that were categorized as Republicans in Study 1a as more likeable and trustworthy than faces categorized as Democrats. Thus, this paper joins a growing literature showing that it is critical to consider perceiver identity in examining perceptions of identities and traits from faces.
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