Gendered Facial Cues Influence Race Categorizations

Abstract

Race and gender categories, although long presumed to be perceived independently, are inextricably tethered in social perception due in part to natural confounding of phenotypic cues. We predicted that target gender would affect race categorizations. Consistent with this hypothesis, feminine faces compelled White categorizations, and masculine faces compelled Asian or Black categorizations of racially ambiguous targets (Study 1), monoracial targets (Study 2), and real facial photographs (Study 3). The efficiency of judgments varied concomitantly. White categorizations were rendered more rapidly for feminine, relative to masculine faces, but the opposite was true for Asian and Black categorizations (Studies 1-3). Moreover, the effect of gender on categorization efficiency was compelled by racial phenotypicality for Black targets (Study 3). Finally, when targets' race prototypicality was held constant, gender still influenced race categorizations (Study 4). These findings indicate that race categorizations are biased by presumably unrelated gender cues.

Emergent Research in Social Vision: An Integrated Approach to the Determinants and Consequences of Social Categorization

“…Similar effects have emerged for other social categorizations and for body perceptions. For instance, gendered facial cues bias race categorizations in a similar fashion to the results described above (Carpinella, Chen, Hamilton, & Johnson, ). In a recent series of studies, participants categorized the race of faces that varied in gender typicality.…”

More Than Meets the Eye: Split-Second Social Perception

“…These ‘race is gendered’ effects are exacerbated for perceivers holding stronger overlapping stereotypes between Black and male categories, and Asian and female categories [48,50]. These perceptual biases also have lasting impacts, predicting leadership selection or interracial dating [51].…”

Interference among the Processing of Facial Emotion, Face Race, and Face Gender

“…People with expertise in face processing can quickly and simultaneously process facial information from multiple dimensions. Previous studies focused on the concurrent processing of two dimensions, such as race and emotion (e.g., Hugenberg, 2005; Craig et al, 2012), race and gender (e.g., Zhao and Hayward, 2013; Carpinella et al, 2015), and emotion and gender (e.g., Karnadewi and Lipp, 2011). These studies examined the interaction between dimensions on face recognition and whether they were symmetric or asymmetric.…”

“…For example, when categorizing racially ambiguous faces, White participants were faster to categorize the target face as White than as Black/Asian for female faces and were faster to categorize the target face as Black/Asian than as White for male faces. That is, race categorization is biased by face gender (Carpinella et al, 2015). Other works revealed more errors in gender categorization for Black women than for Black men, White women, and White men (Goff et al, 2008).…”

“…Gender cues biased race categorization. When racially ambiguous faces became more feminine, White participants were more likely to classify them as White than to classify them as Black or Asian (Carpinella et al, 2015). There was also some evidence for race cues biasing gender categorization.…”