Abstract
People form impressions of others from their faces, inferring character traits (e.g., friendly) along two broad, influential dimensions: Warmth and Competence. Although these two dimensions are presumed to be independent, research has yet to examine the generalizability of this model to cross-group impressions, despite extant evidence that Warmth and Competence are not independent for outgroup targets. This thesis explores this possibility by testing models of person perception for own-group and other-group perceptions, implementing confirmatory factor analysis in a structural equation modeling framework, and analyzing the underlying trait space using representational similarity analysis. I fit 402,473 ratings of 873 unique faces from 5,040 participants on 14 trait impressions to own-group and other-group models, exploring whether perceptions across race and gender are more unidimensional. Results indicate that current models of face perception fit poorly and are not universal as presumed: the space of trait impressions varies depending on targets’ race and gender. Keywords: person perception, impression formation, face perception, intergroup processes, social cognition
Highlights
People regularly form impressions of others based on their facial appearance, drawing social inferences about their character through a perceptual process that is effortless and spontaneous (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008; Todorov, Olivola, Dotsch, & MendeSiedlecki, 2015; Willis & Todorov, 2006)
Researchers in the domain of face perception have used data-reduction techniques to distill these myriad social impressions down to two latent, independent dimensions: Trustworthiness and Dominance (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008; Todorov, Baron, et al, 2008; Todorov et al, 2013; Todorov, Said, et al, 2008), with recent work finding a third dimension of YouthfulAttractiveness (Sutherland, 2015; Sutherland et al, 2013; Sutherland, Oldmeadow, et al, 2016)
Within the face perception domain, the twodimensional model was developed and validated with White participants’ ratings of computergenerated White male faces (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008; Todorov et al, 2013) – and whether this model generalizes to cross-group perceptions of real facial stimuli has yet to be examined
Summary
People regularly form impressions of others based on their facial appearance, drawing social inferences about their character (e.g., trustworthy) through a perceptual process that is effortless and spontaneous (Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008; Todorov, Olivola, Dotsch, & MendeSiedlecki, 2015; Willis & Todorov, 2006). Past researchers have used data-reduction techniques to distill these trait impressions down to two latent dimensions underlying person perception, which reflect exigent social pressures to quickly distinguish friend from foe: (1) whether a person has good or ill intentions: Warmth, and (2) that person’s ability to enact those intentions: Competence (Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007; Freeman & Ambady, 2011; Todorov, Said, Engell, & Oosterhof, 2008) These two-dimensional models of group and person perception have been extremely influential, with research showing that social evaluations along these dimensions effect a panoply of downstream societal consequences, from election results (Ballew & Todorov, 2007; Hehman, Carpinella, Johnson, Leitner, & Freeman, 2014; Olivola & Todorov, 2010a; Todorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005) to judicial outcomes (Blair, Judd, & Chapleau, 2004; Wilson & Rule, 2015) to dating and hiring decisions (Stevenage & McKay, 1999). Perceptions along each dimension may be correlated or occur in a more “unidimensional” manner (Figure 1) in which judgements on one dimension bias the other
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