Normalizing Anomalies with Mobile Exposure (NAME): Reducing implicit biases against people with facial anomalies

Abstract

This pre-registered study (https://osf.io/b9g6v) tested the hypothesis that implicit biases towards people with visible facial differences, like scars and palsies, can be reduced through routine exposure to faces bearing such anomalous features. Participants’ implicit biases were measured before and after they completed one of two exposure interventions—to people with facial anomalies, or to people of color (POC). The interventions were delivered remotely using a custom mobile phone application and consisted of two sessions per day over 5 consecutive days. Each session began with exposure to 10 face photographs (anomalous or POC) followed by another person’s face (anomalous or POC) presented alongside a moral exemplar story ostensibly about them. After receiving the anomalous faces intervention, implicit biases against anomalous faces were significantly reduced but implicit biases against POC were not affected. The POC intervention did not have a targeted effect on bias against people of color, instead reducing biases against both people with visible differences and POC. Reductions in implicit biases were positively associated with perspective taking ratings made during the intervention. These findings suggest that exposure to people with facial anomalies, especially exposure that elicits perspective taking, can reduce implicit biases towards them in a targeted fashion.

Do attitudes about and behaviors towards people who enhance their cognition depend on their looks?

“…Previous work has consistently demonstrated that facial anomalies negatively affect perceptions of warmth (e.g., trustworthiness), with less consistent evidence for a negative effect on perceptions of competence (Bilici et al, 2022;Jamrozik et al, 2019;Workman et al, , 2022. In contrast to these studies, however, we did not uncover evidence that facial anomalies influenced perceptions of warmth let alone competence.…”

“…We first hypothesized that the anomalous-is-bad stereotype manifests in negative moral attitudes about the potential use of cognitive enhancement by people with facial anomalies. We predicted that anomalous faces would elicit stronger moral opposition to cognitive enhancement compared to non-anomalous faces, consistent with the view that anomalous faces signal underlying moral deficiencies that could be exacerbated with enhancement (Bilici et al, 2022;Croley et al, 2017;Marion et al, 2018;. Alternatively, anomalous faces may elicit weaker moral opposition to cognitive enhancement compared to non-anomalous faces, which could indicate that facial anomalies are perceived as hardships that trigger pity or sympathy in viewers (Andreasen & Norris, 1972;Rumsey & Bull, 1986) that then motivates a desire to "level the playing field" for those who look different.…”

“…First, although participants made negative moral judgments about M. Miller with facial anomalies, they may discard or update these crude moral intuitions in favor of newly acquired information as it becomes available (e.g., from the vignette and from whether M. Miller enhanced). This perspective aligns with evidence that individuating outgroup members with personal information about them can ameliorate negative biases directed against them (Bilici et al, 2022;Majdandžić et al, 2012). Alternatively, the Trust Game may not capture the kinds of social penalties levied upon people with facial anomalies in the real world.…”

Cinematic Representations of Visible Facial Differences Across Time and Cultures

“…Furthermore, an intervention study that sought to downregulate negative implicit biases against facial differences in American volunteers (Bilici et al, 2022) underscored the flexibility of these attitudes. Surprisingly, something as simple as exposing people to anomalous faces and presenting them with counterexamples to the scarred villain trope downregulated negative implicit biases (Bilici et al, 2022).…”

“…Furthermore, an intervention study that sought to downregulate negative implicit biases against facial differences in American volunteers (Bilici et al, 2022) underscored the flexibility of these attitudes. Surprisingly, something as simple as exposing people to anomalous faces and presenting them with counterexamples to the scarred villain trope downregulated negative implicit biases (Bilici et al, 2022). Since people have limited opportunities to form impressions about people with facial differences in daily life, negative representations of facial differences in popular media may fill this knowledge gap in a perniciously outsized way.…”