Revealing faces: Gender and cultural differences in facial prominence of selfies.

Nenad Čuš Babič,Tadevž Ropert,Bojan Musil,Justin Matthews

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0205893

Abstract

An international sample of 2754 selfies uploaded to Instagram that form part of the Selfiecity (www.selfiecity.net) research project (selfies originating from Bangkok, Berlin, London, Moscow, New York, and Sao Paolo) were examined to assess the existence of facial prominence differences in depictions of males and females and the variability of facial prominence among cultures. Results show that gender stereotypical bias resulting in greater facial prominence in depictions of men is present in selfies. The control of image creation and selection for publication by the persons presented in the images do not diminish this gender based bias. Also, when gender is controlled, significant differences exist in facial prominence among different cultures. Comparisons with various socio-cultural indicators indicate possible correlations of gender stereotypical bias to self-expression values, freedom of choice, people’s influence on government’s decisions, protection of freedom of speech and people’s influence on issues in the professional and communal environment. This research does not find a correlation of gender based bias in selfies with gender equality or inequality measures among cultures.

Highlights

The selfie, defined as, “a self-portrait photograph of oneself, taken with a camera or a camera phone held at arm’s length or pointed at a mirror, which is usually shared through social media” [1] has become a widespread form of self-presentation in recent years
But potentially meaningful aspect of selfies is their variation in facial prominence, i.e. the ratio of the head to the total visible body including the head in the depiction of a person
This study explores how gender related bias in the facial prominence in selfies appears in different cultures

Summary

Introduction

The selfie, defined as, “a self-portrait photograph of oneself (or of oneself and other people), taken with a camera or a camera phone held at arm’s length or pointed at a mirror, which is usually shared through social media” [1] has become a widespread form of self-presentation in recent years. Selfies differ in a variety of ways; previous studies address distinct aspects, such as cheek side prominence [3,4], photo filter usage [5], or the number of people in the photo [1] or address the holistic coding schemes of selfies [6,7]. Facial prominence in selfies is relevant because the degree of facial prominence has a variety of consequences for social perception. Studies have consistently shown that persons depicted with higher facial prominence are perceived as more dominant [8,9,10], ambitious [8,11,12] and assertive [10,11] than persons with lower facial prominence

Methods

Results

Conclusion