Social evaluation of faces across gender and familiarity

TY - JOUR

T1 - Social evaluation of faces across gender and familiarity

AU - Mileva, Mila

AU - Kramer, Robin Stewart Samuel

AU - Burton, Anthony Michael

N1 - ©The Author(s) 2019. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2019/6/1

Y1 - 2019/6/1

N2 - Models of social evaluation aim to capture the information people use to form first impressions of unfamiliar others. However, little is currently known about the relationship between perceived traits across gender. In Study 1, we asked viewers to provide ratings of key social dimensions (dominance, trustworthiness etc.) for multiple images of 40 unfamiliar identities. We observed clear sex differences in the perception of dominance – with negative evaluations of high dominance in unfamiliar females, but not males. In Study 2, we used the social evaluation context to investigate key predictions about the importance of pictorial information in familiar and unfamiliar face processing. We compared the consistency of ratings attributed to different images of the same identities and demonstrated that ratings of images depicting the same familiar identity are more tightly clustered than those of unfamiliar identities. Such results imply a shift from image rating to person rating with increased familiarity, a finding which generalises results previously observed in studies of identification.

AB - Models of social evaluation aim to capture the information people use to form first impressions of unfamiliar others. However, little is currently known about the relationship between perceived traits across gender. In Study 1, we asked viewers to provide ratings of key social dimensions (dominance, trustworthiness etc.) for multiple images of 40 unfamiliar identities. We observed clear sex differences in the perception of dominance – with negative evaluations of high dominance in unfamiliar females, but not males. In Study 2, we used the social evaluation context to investigate key predictions about the importance of pictorial information in familiar and unfamiliar face processing. We compared the consistency of ratings attributed to different images of the same identities and demonstrated that ratings of images depicting the same familiar identity are more tightly clustered than those of unfamiliar identities. Such results imply a shift from image rating to person rating with increased familiarity, a finding which generalises results previously observed in studies of identification.

KW - face perception

KW - familiar faces

KW - first impressions

KW - social evaluation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066845920&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0301006619848996

DO - 10.1177/0301006619848996

M3 - Article

SN - 0301-0066

VL - 48

SP - 471

EP - 486

JO - Perception

JF - Perception

IS - 6

ER -