The creepy, the bad and the ugly: exploring perceptions of moral character and social desirability in uncanny faces

Abstract

We used implicit and explicit measures to study whether “real” uncanny faces (by faces of Botox users and very ugly people) will be associated with perceptions of bad moral character and social avoidance. Implicit measures showed that uncanny faces were more strongly associated with negative aesthetic evaluations (“ugliness”) than with negative moral evaluation (“moral disgust”). At the explicit level, participants preferred greater social distance from uncanny faces than from neutral faces and inferred that they shared fewer moral values with uncanny faces than with neutral faces. Contrary to our hypotheses, only Ugly faces (but not Botox faces) were perceived as more likely to commit behaviors that indicate bad moral character. However, when this analysis was restricted to “sick” immoral actions, Botox faces were perceived as more likely to be engage in these kind of behaviors than neutral faces. Although exploratory in nature, this investigation suggest that ugliness (more than creepiness) may be the crucial evaluative dimension underlying rapid moral inferences from faces.

The vocal uncanny valley: Deviation from typical organic voices best explains uncanniness.

“…Pathological voices are more likely to be categorized as atypical [22,23,24] and are evaluated more negatively across various social dimensions compared to healthy voices [25,26,27,28]. In analogy, previous research has suggested that dysmorphic, diseased, or very unattractive faces are perceived as uncanny or creepy [17,29]. Thus, pathological voices, similarly to dis gured faces, may fall into an uncanny valley as highly realistic yet deviating stimuli.…”