Facial width-to-height ratio predicts psychopathic traits in males

Anderl, Christine; Hahn, Tim; Schmidt, Ann-Kathrin; Moldenhauer, Heike; Notebaert, Karolien; Clément, Celina Chantal; Windmann, Sabine

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.08.057

Cited by 34 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In a similar vein, research on individuals with psychopathic traits has begun to describe socially adaptive lifestyles [ 39 ] and subtle forms of strategic defection that can facilitate ascent in social rank [ 40 ]. Like testosterone, fWHR has been associated with psychopathic personality traits [ 5 , 6 ], but has also been found to correlate positively with “self-sacrificing” under conditions of group competition [ 41 ]. Adding our results, when interpreted in terms of fWHR-associated personality traits, the emerging pattern suggests that any black-and-white type of thinking about the behavioral implications of either high fWHR or the effects of testosterone seems inappropriate.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Empirical studies have consistently linked the measure with antisocial behavioral tendencies in a large number of well-controlled studies. For example, men with high fWHR were described to be more aggressive [ 1 – 4 ], more fearless-dominant [ 5 ], higher in psychopathy [ 6 ], and less likely to die from direct physical violence than narrower-faced males [ 7 ]. Wider faced men are more willing to cheat in order to increase their financial gains, more readily exploit the trust of others, and more often explicitly deceive their counterparts in a negotiation [ 5 , 8 – 10 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Facial width-to-height ratio differs by social rank across organizations, countries, and value systems

et al. 2017

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Facial Width-to-Height Ratio (fWHR) has been linked with dominant and aggressive behavior in human males. We show here that on portrait photographs published online, chief executive officers (CEOs) of companies listed in the Dow Jones stock market index and the Deutscher Aktienindex have a higher-than-normal fWHR, which also correlates positively with their company’s donations to charitable causes and environmental awareness. Furthermore, we show that leaders of the world’s most influential non-governmental organizations and even the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, the popes, have higher fWHR compared to controls on public portraits, suggesting that the relationship between displayed fWHR and leadership is not limited to profit-seeking organizations. The data speak against the simplistic view that wider-faced men achieve higher social status through antisocial tendencies and overt aggression, or the mere signaling of such dispositions. Instead they suggest that high fWHR is linked with high social rank in a more subtle fashion in both competitive as well as prosocially oriented settings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facial width-to-height ratio differs by social rank across organizations, countries, and value systems

et al. 2017

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“…Taken together, the extant literature paints a picture of the high fWHR individual as someone who is impulsively aggressive and generally unsociable (Anderl et al, 2016), a combination of characteristics that appears to overlap with perceptions of individuals who lack human sophisticationmapping closely onto multiple models of biases in mind ascription (i.e., mind perception, Gray et al, 2007;senses of humanness, Haslam, 2006;blatant dehumanization, Kteily et al, 2015;infrahumanization, Leyens et al, 2000). From this, it is possible that these established fWHR-to-trait links may actually generate the perception that higher fWHR targets are less than fully human (relative to their lower fWHR counterparts).…”

Section: Current Research: Facial Width-to-height Ratio and Dehumanizmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facing humanness: Facial width-to-height ratio predicts ascriptions of humanity

Deska¹,

Lloyd²,

Hugenberg³

2017

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The ascription of mind to others is central to social cognition. Most research on the ascription of mind has focused on motivated, top-down processes. The current work provides novel evidence that facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) serves as a bottom-up perceptual signal of humanness. Using a range of well-validated operational definitions of humanness, we provide evidence across five studies that target faces with relatively greater fWHR are seen as less than fully human compared to their relatively lower fWHR counterparts. We then present two ancillary studies exploring whether the fWHR-to-humanness link is mediated by previously established fWHR-trait links in the literature. Finally, three additional studies extend this fWHR-humanness link beyond measurements of humanness, demonstrating that the fWHR-humanness link has consequences for downstream social judgments including the sorts of crimes people are perceived to be guilty of and the social tasks for which they seem helpful. In short, we provide evidence for the hypothesis that individuals with relatively greater facial width-to-height ratio are routinely denied sophisticated, humanlike minds.

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“…For instance, the facial widthto-height ratio (fWHR)-the distance of the bizogymatic width divided by the distance between the brow and upper lip-is positively correlated with measures of aggressive behavior (Carré & McCormick, 2008;Welker et al, 2014;Lefevre et al, 2014;Goetz et al, 2013, but see Ozener, 2012and Gomez-Valdes et al, 2013, psychopathic traits (Geniole et al, 2014a;Anderl et al, 2016), achievement drive (Lewis et al, 2012), competitive success (baseball study of homeruns:…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%