Abstract
Taking selfies is now becoming a standard human habit. However, as a social phenomenon, research is still in the fledgling stage and the scientific framework is sparse. Selfies allow us to share social information with others in a compact format. Furthermore, we are able to control important photographic and compositional aspects, such as perspective, which have a strong impact on the assessment of a face (e.g., demonstrated by the height-weight illusion, effects of gaze direction, faceism-index). In Study 1, we focused on the impact of perspective (left/right hemiface, above/below vs. frontal presentation) on higher cognitive variables and let 172 participants rate the perceived attractiveness, helpfulness, sympathy, dominance, distinctiveness, and intelligence, plus important information on health issues (e.g., body weight), on the basis of 14 3D faces. We could show that lateral snapshots yielded higher ratings for attractiveness compared to the classical frontal view. However, this effect was more pronounced for left hemifaces and especially female faces. Compared to the frontal condition, 30° right hemifaces were rated as more helpful, but only for female faces while faces viewed from above were perceived as significant less helpful. Direct comparison between left vs. right hemifaces revealed no effect. Relating to sympathy, we only found a significant effect for 30° right male hemifaces, but only in comparison to the frontal condition. Furthermore, female 30° right hemifaces were perceived as more intelligent. Relating to body weight, we replicated the so-called “height-weight illusion.” Other variables remained unaffected. In Study 2, we investigated the impact of a typical selfie-style condition by presenting the respective faces from a lateral (left/right) and tilted (lower/higher) vantage point. Most importantly, depending on what persons wish to express with a selfie, a systematic change of perspective can strongly optimize their message; e.g., increasing their attractiveness by shooting from above left, and in contrast, decreasing their expressed helpfulness by shooting from below. We could further extent past findings relating to the height-weight illusion and showed that an additional rotation of the camera positively affected the perception of body weight (lower body weight). We discuss potential explanations for perspective-related effects, especially gender-related ones.
Highlights
Taking selfies is a well-known but still poorly investigated social phenomenon
In contrast to a classical portrait, it refers to a self-portrait picture taken by ourselves using e.g., the frontal camera of a smartphone and allows us to control important photographic and compositional aspects such as perspective, which has a strong impact on perceptual factors
Data were analyzed with a two-factorial repeated-measures analysis of variance with the within-subject factor viewing perspective and the between-subject factor model gender
Summary
Taking selfies is a well-known but still poorly investigated social phenomenon. In contrast to a classical portrait, it refers to a self-portrait picture taken by ourselves using e.g., the frontal camera of a smartphone and allows us to control important photographic and compositional aspects such as perspective, which has a strong impact on perceptual factors (e.g., variation of the assessed weight, the so-called “height-weight illusion”, see Schneider et al, 2012). Guntuku et al (2015) analyzed several visual cues (so-called “mid-level cues”) relating to the selfietaker’s personality (such as facial expression, photo location, Photoshop editing, amount of body visible etc.) and found that Agreeableness—in the sense of the Big-Five personality factors which are described as personality traits manifesting themselves in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, and considerate—(see Thompson, 2008) was negatively correlated with camera height (agreeable individuals are more likely to take selfies from below). Dynamic cues, such as clothing, provided valuable information for the predicted personality (see e.g., Penton-Voak et al, 2001; Qiu et al, 2015 for futher investigations)
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