Gender aftereffects in the perception of silhouetted face profiles

Abstract

Recent studies have shown figural aftereffects in the perception of faces, including gender, race, and identity aftereffects (e.g., Leopold et al., 2001; Webster et al., 2004; Witthoft & Winawer, 2005). In such studies, prolonged exposure to a face with a particular characteristic (e.g., female) temporarily biases subsequent perception of faces in the opposite direction in face-space (e.g., male). Here we report such adaptation in a brief, implicit adaptation paradigm using parameterized silhouetted face profiles that rely on 18 landmark points to specify each face (Davidenko, 2004). We constructed a set of 8 male and 8 female face silhouettes, and a gender-neutral silhouette produced by averaging 20 male and 20 female silhouettes. Subjects were unaware that there were separate adaptation and test conditions; they simply rated each of 9 silhouettes on one of four dimensions: age, race, attractiveness, or gender. The first 8 silhouettes were either all female (Condition 1) or all male (Condition 2), and the 9th face was gender-neutral. Gender was only rated on the 9th face. We report a dramatic gender aftereffect with face silhouettes: 97% of subjects in Condition 1 (57 of 59) labeled the neutral silhouette as male, compared to 39% in Condition 2 (24 of 62). To our knowledge, this is the first report of face adaptation using profiles. In addition, these effects further validate Davidenko's silhouette face-space.