Taking the Perfect Selfie: Investigating the Impact of Perspective on the Perception of Higher Cognitive Variables

Abstract

Taking selfies is now becoming a standard human habit. However, as a social phenomenon, research is still in the fledgling stage and the scientific framework is sparse. Selfies allow us to share social information with others in a compact format. Furthermore, we are able to control important photographic and compositional aspects, such as perspective, which have a strong impact on the assessment of a face (e.g., demonstrated by the height-weight illusion, effects of gaze direction, faceism-index). In Study 1, we focused on the impact of perspective (left/right hemiface, above/below vs. frontal presentation) on higher cognitive variables and let 172 participants rate the perceived attractiveness, helpfulness, sympathy, dominance, distinctiveness, and intelligence, plus important information on health issues (e.g., body weight), on the basis of 14 3D faces. We could show that lateral snapshots yielded higher ratings for attractiveness compared to the classical frontal view. However, this effect was more pronounced for left hemifaces and especially female faces. Compared to the frontal condition, 30° right hemifaces were rated as more helpful, but only for female faces while faces viewed from above were perceived as significant less helpful. Direct comparison between left vs. right hemifaces revealed no effect. Relating to sympathy, we only found a significant effect for 30° right male hemifaces, but only in comparison to the frontal condition. Furthermore, female 30° right hemifaces were perceived as more intelligent. Relating to body weight, we replicated the so-called “height-weight illusion.” Other variables remained unaffected. In Study 2, we investigated the impact of a typical selfie-style condition by presenting the respective faces from a lateral (left/right) and tilted (lower/higher) vantage point. Most importantly, depending on what persons wish to express with a selfie, a systematic change of perspective can strongly optimize their message; e.g., increasing their attractiveness by shooting from above left, and in contrast, decreasing their expressed helpfulness by shooting from below. We could further extent past findings relating to the height-weight illusion and showed that an additional rotation of the camera positively affected the perception of body weight (lower body weight). We discuss potential explanations for perspective-related effects, especially gender-related ones.

Selfies as Duplex Non-verbal Communication: Human—Media Interaction, Human—Human Interaction, Case Study, and Research Manifesto

“…The same search on the specialist database PubMed yields only about 60 hits, but the bulk of these papers consists of policy commentaries, historical narratives, clinical studies, and health communication applications with limited empirical content. The relatively few papers of interest for the current project may be grouped into three broad categories: studies attempting to connect selfierelated behaviors to personality and motivation (Qiu et al, 2015;Sorokowski et al, 2015;Dhir et al, 2016Dhir et al, , 2017Sorokowska et al, 2016;Sung et al, 2016;Baiocco et al, 2017;Diefenbach and Christoforakos, 2017;Etgar and Amichai-Hamburger, 2017;Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017;Krämer et al, 2017;Musil et al, 2017); studies assessing visual compositional choices for selfies, sometimes in relation to neuropsychological hypotheses (Bruno and Bertamini, 2013;Bruno et al, 2014Bruno et al, , 2015Bruno et al, , 2017Lindell, 2017a,b;Manovich et al, 2017;Schneider and Carbon, 2017;Sedgewick et al, 2017;Babic et al, 2018), and theory papers (Frosh, 2015;Senft and Baym, 2015;Eagar and Dann, 2016;Lim, 2016;Carbon, 2017;Kozinets et al, 2017;Bruno et al, 2018). While interesting, these findings and analyses remain scattered and in need of a common theoretical framework.…”

Eye Gaze and Head Posture Jointly Influence Judgments of Dominance, Physical Strength, and Anger

“…More recently, Schneider and Carbon (2017) asked participants to judge faces on dominance. In contrast to previous studies, they did not find an effect of head posture.…”

Turning Heads: The Effects of Face View and Eye Gaze Direction on the Perceived Attractiveness of Expressive Faces

“…The mean rating across these conditions is shown in Figure 2. A preliminary analysis of the data also included the sex of the participant and the side of the face presented during the head turn (left or right) as factors to check for any effect of lateralisation on ratings of attractiveness (Burt & Perrett, 1997; Dunstan & Lindell, 2012; Schneider & Carbon, 2017; Sitton, Waite, & Rivers, 2006; Zaidel, Chen, & German, 1995). The results revealed no significant differences between the ratings made by female and male participants, F (1, 28) = 0.025, p = .875, ηp 2 = 0.001, nor between the ratings given to faces presented with the left and right views during head turn, F (1, 28) = 0.107, p = .746, ηp 2 = 0.004.…”

“…While direct gaze generally enhances perceived attractiveness as discussed earlier, the frontal face view does not share the same advantage. From centuries-old art portraits to mobile phone “selfies,” the three-quarter view is commonly preferred over the frontal view (Bruno & Bertamini, 2013; Kaisler & Leder, 2017; McManus & Humphrey, 1973; Powell & Schirillo, 2009; Schneider & Carbon, 2017). This three-quarter view advantage could be explained by the enhanced recognisability of faces due to the additional information available compared with the frontal view (Bruce et al., 1987).…”