Abstract
The present study aims to replicate and extend Rule and Ambady (2010a)'s findings that Republicans and Democrats could be differentiated by face. In Experiment 1, undergraduates categorized 50 gray-scale full-face photos of candidates of the two major political parties in Taiwan, the Kuomingtang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Using identical stimuli and procedure, Experiment 2 tested 25- to 57-year-olds. Experiment 3 tested undergraduates with cropped photos, Experiment 4, with photos devoid of the mouth and chin area. At the end of each Experiment, we interviewed the participants about the strategies used. Results showed that undergraduates could categorize KMT and DPP with accuracies significantly higher than chance in full-face photos (Experiment 1), M = 0.524, p = 0.045, cropped photos (Experiment 3), M = 0.534, p = 0.016, and photos devoid of the mouth-and-chin area (Experiment 4), M = 0.530, p = 0.048. Adults aged between 25 and 57 could also categorize full-face photos (Experiment 2), M = 0.557, p < 0.001. Analysis on strategy use revealed that the better-than-chance performance may be a unique contribution of those who reported making face-to-trait inferences. In sum, we replicated Rule and Ambady's (2010a) results in East Asian and found that face-to-trait inferences may be essential.
Highlights
People automatically categorize others (Macrae and Bodenhausen, 2000)
Rule and Ambady (2010a) demonstrated that North American university students could differentiate Democrats from Republicans by face photos, and very likely, that such categorization was achieved via spontaneous trait-inference (STI; Willis and Todorov, 2006) or Catagorizing Political Parties by Face face-to-trait inference (FTI), a mechanism by which one extrapolates parameters on a face and assign personality traits to them (Willis and Todorov, 2006)
With the face categorization task and an open interview at the end, the present study tested the cross-cultural generality of Rule and Ambady’s results (2010a) in Taiwan, and the roles of age, face-to-trait inferences, external contour and mouth-and-chin area of the faces
Summary
People automatically categorize others (Macrae and Bodenhausen, 2000). In just a glance at faces, people can effortlessly identify perceptually salient features such as age, gender, and emotions, with relatively little information (Gosselin and Schyns, 2001, 2004). Rule and Ambady (2010a) demonstrated that North American university students could differentiate Democrats from Republicans by face photos, and very likely, that such categorization was achieved via spontaneous trait-inference (STI; Willis and Todorov, 2006) or. Similar to the U.S, Taiwan is a bipartisan democracy, with two dominant parties Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Kuomintang (KMT, sometimes referred to as the Chinese Nationalist Party; the two parties listed in alphabetical order) This makes Taiwan a suitable vehicle to test the cross-cultural generality of Rule and Ambady (2010a)’s results. Based on the first two experiments, we made preliminary attempts to explore the relationship between participants’ strategies of guessing and their accuracies, and observed that participants who solely relied on observable features, such as hairstyle and dress formality, to categorize photos, tended to be worse guessers than those who reported making face-to-trait inferences. This was to gain insight about the nature and effectiveness of the strategies
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