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

Abstract

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 5 studies that target faces with relatively greater fWHR are seen as less than fully human compared with their relatively lower fWHR counterparts. We then present 2 ancillary studies exploring whether the fWHR-to-humanness link is mediated by previously established fWHR-trait links in the literature. Finally, 3 additional studies extend this fWHR-humanness link beyond measurements of humanness, demonstrating that the fWHRhumanness 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.

The face‐mind link: Why we see minds behind faces, and how others' minds change how we see their face

“…Other facial characteristics too, such as facial structure, can influence mind perception. Recent work demonstrates that targets' facial width-to-height ratio influences the extent to which they are ascribed or denied sophisticated mental capacities (Deska, Lloyd, & Hugenberg, 2017). Although past work shows that perceivers judge individuals with relatively greater facial width-to-height ratio as relatively more dominant and threatening (Geniole, Denson, Dixson, Carré, & McCormick, 2015), recent work from our lab has extended this link to perceptions of mind (see Figure 3).…”

“…Yet when we see a face, we see eyes and the nose, and the mouth, but we also integrate the eyes, the nose, and the mouth together into a single perceptual unit. This is part of why we can easily tell thousands of human FIGURE 3 Individuals with relatively greater facial width-to-height ratio (i.e., wider and shorter faces, such as the man on the right) are ascribed less sophisticated minds (Deska, Lloyd, & Hugenberg, 2017) faces apart even though they differ by only millimeters. Imagine walking through a parking lot containing cars of the same make and model that differ only in millimeters; you would never be able to find your car!…”

Group Facial Width-to-Height Ratio Predicts Intergroup Negotiation Outcomes

“…Two recent meta-analyses also found that overall, men with larger FWHRs tend to behave in a dominant and aggressive manner and are perceived accordingly ( Geniole et al, 2015 ; Haselhuhn et al, 2015 ). Men with larger FWHRs are perceived as more threatening, less human, and more animal-like ( Geniole et al, 2015 ; Deska and Hugenberg, 2018 ; Deska et al, 2018 ). Thus, groups who negotiate with groups with relatively large FWHRs are likely to detect these intimidating qualities and concede more easily in negotiations against counterparts with relatively large FHWRs.…”

“…Because people with large FWHRs are perceived as threatening, dominant, and animal-like, we expected that groups with relatively larger FWHRs (either a single individual or the group’s average FWHR) would claim relatively greater value in the negotiation ( Geniole et al, 2015 ; Deska and Hugenberg, 2018 ; Deska et al, 2018 ). These qualities should be intimidating to their negotiation counterparts.…”

Trait Ratings for the Radboud Faces Database

“…Ratings of models' attractiveness based on their neutral, frontal gaze image is also available and age data for most models can be found at http://gijsbijlstra.nl/rafd-ratings/. These ratings are useful for researchers who want to (a) select models who score particularly low or high on a certain characteristic (e.g., Deska, Lloyd, & Hugenberg, 2017;Klapper, Dotsch, van Rooij, & Wigboldus, 2016), (b) ensure that different image sets do not significantly differ on certain characteristics (e.g., Jaeger, Wagemans, Evans, & van Beest, 2018), or (c) control for these characteristics in statistical analyses (e.g., Zloteanu, Harvey, Tuckett, & Livan, 2018). Here, additional trait ratings for all 39 models of the RaFD's Caucasian Adult Subset (neutral expression, frontal gaze) are presented.…”