Recalibrating gender perception: Face aftereffects and the perceptual underpinnings of gender-related biases.

Abstract

Contemporary perceivers encounter highly gendered imagery in media, social networks, and the workplace. Perceivers also express strong interpersonal biases related to targets' gendered appearances after mere glimpses at their faces. In the current studies, we explored adaptation to gendered facial features as a perceptual mechanism underlying these biases. In Study 1, brief visual exposure to highly gendered exemplars shifted perceptual norms for men's and women's faces. Studies 2-4 revealed that changes in perceptual norms were accompanied by notable shifts in social evaluations. Specifically, exposure to feminine phenotypes exacerbated biases against hypermasculine faces, whereas exposure to masculine phenotypes mitigated them. These findings replicated across multiple independent samples with diverse stimulus sets and outcome measures, revealing that perceptual gender norms are calibrated on the basis of recent visual encounters, with notable implications for downstream evaluations of others. As such, visual adaptation is a useful tool for understanding and altering social biases related to gendered facial features.