Social Status Moderates the Relationship Between Facial Structure and Aggression

Abstract

A growing body of evidence has linked individual differences in facial structure-in particular, the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR)-to social behaviors, including aggression, cheating, and nonreciprocation of trust. In the research reported here, we extended this work by demonstrating that the association between FWHR and aggression is moderated by subjective and objective measures of social status. In Study 1 (N = 237 college students), FWHR was positively correlated with aggressive behavior, but only among men reporting relatively low social status. In Study 2 (N = 891 professional hockey players), FWHR was positively correlated with penalty minutes, but only among players who earned relatively low salaries. Collectively, these studies provide compelling evidence for the role of social status in moderating the relationship between facial structure and aggression, indicating that FWHR is a robust predictor of aggressive behavior, but only in the context of relatively low social status.

An Examination of the Associations Between Facial Structure, Aggressive Behavior, and Performance in the 2010 World Cup Association Football Players

“…Given that some researchers have reported moderate to large correlations between FWHR and aggression in men (e.g., rs from to.30 to .54 in Carré and McCormick 2008;Carré et al 2009) whereas other more recent studies have found smaller effect sizes when including important covariates such as weight (e.g., r=.09, Deaner et al 2012), future researchers may benefit from assuming a small to moderate effect size between FWHR and relevant behaviors exists when taking into account relevant covariates. Recent research also indicates that social status moderates the association between FWHR and aggression, assertiveness, and risk taking in humans and non-human primates (Goetz et al 2013;Carré 2014;Welker et al 2014). Thus, the relationship FWHR has with aggression and performance may be dependent on social status, which may help explain the diminished effect sizes and nonsignificant psychological and behavioral correlations with FWHR reported by some researchers.…”

“…When these effects were examined separately for defenders, midfielders, and forwards, the relationship between FWHR and fouls were in a negative, nonsignificant direction in defenders (B=−. Based on previous work modeling the effects of FWHR on athletic behaviors (e.g., Goetz et al 2013, Study 2), we also examined our analyses with dependent outcomes of fouls, goals, and assists per game. The multilevel negative binomial analyses could not function with noninteger data.…”

Social Attributions from Faces: Determinants, Consequences, Accuracy, and Functional Significance

“…Furthermore, it was determined that the measure is not sexually dimorphic (Kramer et al 2012, Lefevre et al 2012, and there have been several failures to replicate the finding that it predicts aggressive behavior (Deaner et al 2012, Gómez-Valdés et al 2013. The authors who initially reported the latter effect recently reported that this is only the case for men with low social status (Goetz et al 2013).…”

Does the facial width-to-height ratio map onto variability in men's testosterone concentrations?

“…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:…”