Do We See Masculine Faces as Competent and Feminine Faces as Warm? Effects of Sexual Dimorphism on Facial Perception

Abstract

Previous research on non-facial features demonstrated that masculinity and femininity correlated highly with perceived competence and warmth, respectively. Several studies focused on dimorphic facial cues and found an association between masculine faces and competence. However, there’s no study exploring the association between facial dimorphism and social judgment both using explicit and implicit experimental paradigms, i.e. Triad Classification Task, Implicit Associate Task. This study examined the association of masculinity/femininity and competence/warmth via explicit and implicit measures in three experiments. The results showed that participants saw feminine/masculine faces as more consistent with warmth/competence for both male and female faces. Besides, it was found that the above associations were more obvious in female participants. The current studies extended research of effects of dimorphic facial cue in social judgment and provided direct evidence linking facial masculinity with perceived competence, and facial femininity with perceived warmth.

Feminine perceptions of Kamala Harris positively relate to evaluations of her candidacy

“…By identifying a positive relationship between feminine representations of Harris's face and evaluations of her, the current findings have implications for this work. First, because feminine faces reflect communal traits (Wen et al., 2020), feminine representations of Harris's face may allow her be perceived as communal. Speculatively, feminine representations may allow for concurrent agentic and communal evaluations eliciting evaluative advantages for women successful in top leadership roles (Rosette & Tost, 2010).…”

“…Qualifying a main effect of Trait, F(1, 99) = 7.37, p = .008, η p 2 = .07, was the expected Representation × Trait interaction, F(1, 99) = 12.75, p < .001, η p 2 = .11. Replicating past work (Walker & Wanke, 2017;Wen et al, 2020)…”

“…Qualifying a main effect of Trait, F (1, 99) = 7.37, p = .008, η p 2 = .07, was the expected Representation × Trait interaction, F (1, 99) = 12.75, p < .001, η p 2 = .11. Replicating past work (Walker & Wanke, 2017; Wen et al., 2020), people evaluated the feminine ( M = 4.86, SD = 1.22) versus masculine ( M = 4.61, SD = 1.20) representation as more communal, t (99) = 2.48, p = .02, d = 0.25. They evaluated the feminine ( M = 4.94, SD = 1.08) versus masculine ( M = 5.28, SD = 0.95) representation as less agentic, t (99) = 3.54, p < .001, d = 0.38.…”

“…Although feminine facial cues suggest the communal expectations of the female gender role (Walker & Wanke, 2017; Wen et al., 2020), other features also fulfill expectations of that role (e.g. mannerisms; Eagly & Karau, 2002).…”

“…Expectations of women drive these more positive evaluations. Showing feminine faces to align with stereotypic expectations, people evaluate feminine versus masculine female faces as more communal (Walker & Wanke, 2017; Wen et al., 2020). Gender stereotypes are also reflected in expectations for how female faces look.…”