What's in the Chinese Babyface? Cultural Differences in Understanding the Babyface

Abstract

We investigated the cultural differences in understanding and reacting to the babyface in an effort to identify both cultural and gender biases in the universal hypothesis that the babyfaced individuals are perceived as naïve, cute, innocent, and more trustworthy. Sixty-six Chinese and Sixty-six American participants were required to evaluate Chinese faces selected from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)—Pose, Expression, Accessories, and Lighting (PEAL) Large-Scale Chinese Face Database. In our study, we applied Active Shape Models, a modern technique of machine learning to measure facial features. We found some cultural similarities and also found that a Chinese babyface has bigger eyes, higher eyebrows, a smaller chin, and greater WHR (Facial width-to-height ratio), and looks more attractive and warmer. New findings demonstrate that Chinese babyfaces have a lower forehead and closer pupil distance (PD). We found that when evaluating the babyfacedness of a face, Chinese are more concerned with the combination of all facial features and American are more sensitive to specific highlighted babyfaced features. The Chinese babyface tended to be perceived as more babyfaced for American participants, but not less competent for Chinese participants.

Glued to Which Face? Attentional Priority Effect of Female Babyface and Male Mature Face

“…With an invalid cue, it also takes longer to switch from a more attractive face to the target. In our study, after controlling the attractiveness of face and instructing participants only focus on the central fixation, we found similar attention disengagement effect as Sui and Liu (2009) , suggesting that the female babyface may be preferred by the participants, similar to the attractive faces ( Dou et al, 2014 ; Zebrowitz et al, 2015 ; Zheng et al, 2016 ). The low accuracy of female mature faces under long and valid cueing were unexpected.…”

“…A website 1 , utilizing machine learning techniques and the results of Zheng et al (2016) , was designed to measure the babyfacedness of Chinese faces. 147 female faces (72 babyfaces, 75 mature faces) and 170 male faces (82 babyfaces, 88 mature faces) with similar perceived age were selected as stimuli by this website and human evaluation 2 .…”

“…In small claims court, babyfaced litigants were more likely to get “benefit” and “protected” ( Zebrowitz and McDonald, 1991 ; Zebrowitz and Montepare, 2008 ). Cross-cultural studies have identified similarities in babyface phenomena in different cultural contexts ( Zebrowitz et al, 1992 , 1993 , 2012 ), but cultural and gender biases have been proposed, suggesting that the definition of the babyface in terms of facial structures and social perceptions varies across cultures ( Zheng et al, 2016 ).…”

“…Chinese babyface tended to be perceived as more babyfaced for American participants, but more competent for Chinese participants. When evaluating the babyfacedness of a face, Chinese are more concerned about the combination of all facial features, whereas American are more sensitive to some highlighted babyfaced features ( Zheng et al, 2016 ). Besides, for Chinese participants, facial gender affects the social perceptions of babyface.…”

“…Besides, for Chinese participants, facial gender affects the social perceptions of babyface. Zheng et al (2016) have found that for male Chinese faces, both Chinese and Americans believe that the babyface shows less competence than mature faces. But for the female Chinese faces, Chinese consider the female babyface as more competent, but it is judged to be less competent by American subjects.…”