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Morphed images were presented in a random order during the visual self-representation task; reference faces were not presented to participants.
Source publication
Can the effects of social comparison extend beyond explicit evaluation to visual self-representation--a perceptual stimulus that is objectively verifiable, unambiguous, and frequently updated? We morphed images of participants' faces with attractive and unattractive references. With access to a mirror, participants selected the morphed image they p...
Similar publications
How is race encoded into memory when viewing faces? Here we demonstrate a novel systematic bias in which our memories of faces converge on certain prioritized regions in our underlying “face space,” as they relate to perceived race. This convergence was made especially salient using a new visual variant of the method of serial reproduction: “TeleFa...
Citations
... This accounts for the effect of attractiveness comparison which is known to influence the perception of beauty as aesthetic evaluations are not absolute but rather based on comparisons. [2][3][4] A recent fMRI imaging-based study substantiated this by showing overlapping neural pathways and brain loci involved in the comparison of physical attractiveness and nonsocial magnitudes such as the evaluation of other people's sizes. 5,6 This creates a dilemma when it comes to the evaluation of beauty and aesthetic outcomes: it could be speculated that the outcome of an aesthetic evaluation is different when individual images are rated or when additional images are presented to the rater as a reference. ...
Background
The increasing number of aesthetic procedures emphasizes the need for effective evaluation methods of aesthetic outcomes. Current practices include the individual practitioners' judgment in conjunction with standardized scales, often relying on the comparison of before-and-after images. This study investigates whether comparative evaluations influence the perception of beauty and aims to enhance the accuracy of aesthetic assessments in clinical and research settings.
Objective
To compare the evaluation of attractiveness and gender characteristics of faces in group-based versus individual ratings.
Methods
A sample of 727 volunteers (average age of 29.5 years) assessed 40 facial photographs (20 male, 20 female) for attractiveness, masculinity, and femininity using a 5-point Likert scale. Each face was digitally edited to display varying ratios in four lip-related proportions: vertical lip position, lip width, upper lip aesthetics, and lower lip aesthetics. Participants rated these images both in an image series (group-based) and individually.
Results
Differences in the perception of the most attractive/masculine/feminine ratios for each lip proportion were found in both the group-based and individual ratings. Group ratings exhibited a significant central tendency bias, with a preference for more average outcomes compared to individual ratings, with an average difference of 0.50 versus 1.00. (p=0.033)
Conclusion
A central tendency bias was noted in evaluations of attractiveness, masculinity and femininity in group-based image presentation, indicating a bias towards more “average” features. Conversely, individual assessments displayed a preference for more pronounced, “non-average” appearances, thereby possibly pointing towards a malleable "intrinsic aesthetic blueprint" shaped by comparative context.
... Postupy morfování fotografií nachází své využití v psychologickém výzkumu. S pomocí morfování lze generovat rozmanitý podnětový materiál při výzkumu fyzické atraktivity (Perrett et al., 1994;Rhodes & Tremewan, 1996), percepce (Beale & Keil, 1995), rozeznávání emocí dle výrazu tváře (Jäger et al., 2005), nebo mentální reprezentaci sebe sama (Zell & Balcetis, 2012). Postupy morfování lze využívat k úpravě statických i dynamických podnětů, jak v rovině, tak v trojrozměrném prostoru (Steyvers, 1999). ...
The expanding technological possibilities have opened up space for the detection of psychophysiological changes and behavioral manifestations by non-contact methods that do not interfere with normal interaction. This paper aims to present the experimental design and data of the first pilot case study applying functional infrared thermal imaging and emotional expression analysis for deception detection. In the pilot psychophysiological experiment, we focused on monitoring changes in facial temperature, heart rate variability, and overall facial emotional expression during prepared and spontaneous lie scenarios spoken towards different interviewers.
... Facial stimuli always depicted the real self, four increasingly dominant morphs, and four increasingly submissive morphs. Participants' task was to select the veridical image (i.e., the image they believed was their real face) out of the nine images (display resolution: 200 × 200 pixels) that were presented simultaneously on the screen in a random arrangement (for a similar method, see Epley & Whitchurch, 2008;Wang et al., 2018;Welling et al., 2016;Zell & Balcetis, 2012). Only one image could be selected, and no feedback was provided. ...
... This is surprising considering that male and female others' faces did not significantly differ in perceived dominance as shown in a pilot study. It is possible that comparisons with samesex strangers contributed to higher evaluations in women as a result of upward social comparison (Zell & Balcetis, 2012). ...
While ample evidence supports an association between power and dominance, little is still known about how temporary experiences of power influence the way people come to see themselves and others. The present research investigates the effect of social power on self- and other-face recognition, and examines whether gender modulates the direction of this effect. Male and female participants were induced to feel either powerful or powerless and had to recognize their own face and those of same-sex strangers from a series of images ranging from a dominant to a submissive version of the original. Results showed that males more frequently chose a dominant self-image under high power, whereas females selected a submissive self-image under low power. When presented with faces of same-sex targets female participants relied on low-power features (i.e., submissiveness) of the self in the perception of others (assimilation effect), whereas male participants more often selected a dominant image of strangers when feeling powerless (constrast effect). The effects of power did not extend to more deliberate judgments of dominance and likability, suggesting that respective biases in face recollection operated at an implicit level. This research underscores the cognitive and motivational underpinnings of power and related gender gaps in power attainment.
... comparisons. Using this context, we included articles in which participants judged faces/bodily posture as dominant or submissive, as has been done in an earlier study (Zell & Balcetis, 2012 ...
The ability to accurately infer one's place with respect to others is crucial for social interactions. Individuals tend to evaluate their own actions and outcomes by comparing themselves to others in either an upward or downward direction. We performed two fMRI meta‐analyses on monetary (n = 39; 1,231 participants) and status (n = 23; 572 participants) social comparisons to examine how domain and the direction of comparison can modulate neural correlates of social hierarchy. Overall, both status and monetary downward comparisons activated regions associated with reward processing (striatum) while upward comparisons yielded loss‐related activity. These findings provide partial support for the common currency hypothesis in that downward and upward comparisons from both monetary and status domains resemble gains and losses, respectively. Furthermore, status upward and monetary downward comparisons revealed concordant orbitofrontal cortical activity, an area associated with evaluating the value of goals and decisions implicated in both lesion and empirical fMRI studies investigating social hierarchy. These findings may offer new insight into how people relate to individuals with higher social status and how these social comparisons deviate across monetary and social status domains.
... Several studies have been conducted to assess the importance of having an esthetic smile as compared to other facial features. It was noted from a few of those studies that the majority of participants tend to have a liking for having beautiful smile regardless of the other facial features such as eyes, nose or chin [9,10]. ...
Aim: To assess the perception of the general public towards an ideal smile, to determine an association of good facial esthetics with the high confidence level, to compare the findings based on age, gender, and socioeconomic status. Materials and methods: This study was targeted towards the Saudi general public in Riyadh city; therefore, all males and females more than 18 years of age were recruited to fill up the questionnaire. A total of 10000 Saudi general public were targeted in this study. The survey was sent using online links via social media and other sources. Results: A total of 8437 Saudis male and females filled up the online survey, which comprised of 39% (n=3307) males and 61% (n=5130) females. The participants were grouped based on their education level, which demonstrated that 3% (n=230) are primary level, 34% (n=2861) are high school level, 63%(n=5320) are university graduates. The participants were also grouped based on their socio-economic status, which demonstrated that 5% (n=428) are low status, 89% (n=7539) are moderate status and 6%(n=460) are high status. The participants were also grouped based on their dental visits, which demonstrated that 68% (n=5671) visit 0-2 times, 22% (n=1823) visit 3-5 times and10%(n=911) visit 6 times or more. Conclusion: Females were found to be more concerned about their smile, Educational levels did not affect the decision making, Higher socioeconomic status groups had more concern about their aesthetic smile, Patients with an increased number of dental visits had greater concern about their smile.
... Investigators in many studies do not seem to make it clear enough whether the actual target of their study is facial beauty or facial attractiveness. [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] In this study, we focused on the beauty of the face because there is a difference between attractiveness and beauty. 18 Although it is true that attractiveness can fascinate, not all that attracts is necessarily beautiful. ...
... Concerning the morphometric variables measured on the nose, results from this studydas well as from others 10,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] dseem to agree that most beautiful white people have narrow noses. Our results showed that increasing the alar base negatively affects the esthetics of the nose, whereas a more tapered shape looks better. ...
... This finding suggests that facial ratios such as equality between the facial one-thirds, as well as a 1:1 ratio between eye width and intercanthal distance, are not as important as previously believed. 3,7,17,24,30,31 Among all subcomponents, the smiling mouth was the factor with the highest effect on the facial beauty score (r 2 ¼ 0.38) ( Table 3). As mentioned earlier, the mouth and eyes played the same degree of importance for the attractiveness of male faces. ...
Background:
The aim of this study was to assess whether scores assigned to the eyes, nose, mouth, and chin regions work as predictors of full smiling face scores.
Methods:
In this cross-sectional study, the authors used the facial photographs of 86 smiling men. Photographs yielded 5 components: 1 of the face itself and 4 subcomponents (eyes, nose, mouth, and chin region). Raters assigned the photographs beauty scores that the authors measured morphometrically. The authors analyzed the predictive ability of the subcomponents against that of the full face.
Results:
The subcomponents were statistically significant predictors of facial beauty (mouth: r2 = 0.38, P < .0001; eyes: r2 = 0.14, P < .0001; chin region: r2 = 0.09, P < .0001; nose: r2 = 0.02, P = .05). The more beautiful people had several statistically significant characteristics, such as narrower faces.
Conclusions:
Facial subcomponents are predictive factors of the male smiling face and contribute in the following descending order of importance: mouth, eyes, chin region, and nose.
Practical implications:
The results suggest that for many people improvement in smile esthetics also likely will exert a more positive effect on facial beauty than will other procedures (for example, rhinoplasty).
... By marking up feature points on the target faces that correspond to identical points on the prototype faces, each original image was transformed for shape in 3.33% increments (up to 10%) towards a more dominant or submissive face. This resulted in seven images for each face identity: three increasingly dominant morphs, the original image, and three increasingly submissive morphs (for a similar procedure, see Epley & Whitchurch, 2008;Penton-Voak et al., 2007;Zell & Balcetis, 2012). For reasons of simplicity, we re-labelled the face continuum using a scale from -100% (most dominant) to +100% (most submissive) (see Figure 1). ...
... For this, a series of seven images (the original image as well as three dominant and three submissive Running Head: POWER AND DOMINANCE 13 morphs) was displayed for each facial identity in a scattered random order across the screen and devoid of any information about the target's job title. Participants were instructed to identify the original image of each target's face seen previously (see Epley & Whitchurch, 2008;Penton-Voak et al., 2007;Zell & Balcetis, 2012 for a similar procedure). After the recognition task, participants were asked to choose from a list the job title that corresponds to each face which served as manipulation and attention check. ...
... In the recall phase, they then completed a face recognition task in which the seven images of the target person (original image, dominant and submissive morphs) were shown together with the person's name and job title. Participants were instructed to choose the image which they believed would depict the real person out of an array of stimuli (display resolution: 200 x 200 pixels), presented in a scattered, random order across the screen (for a similar procedure, see Epley & Whitchurch, 2008;Penton-Voak et al., 2007;Zell & Balcetis, 2012). It was encouraged to make a decision within 30 s and to guess if the answer was unknown. ...
A great deal of research has shown that dominant-looking faces are afforded power. In this research, we tested the reverse link. As such, we examined whether knowledge of a target’s power would lead to a dominance bias in face perception. Five studies were conducted by applying face morphing techniques to both controlled facial stimuli and faces of powerholders in the real world. Results showed that faces of powerholders were misrecollected (Studies 1A and 1B) and misperceived (Studies 3A and 3B) as more dominant-looking than their powerless counterparts. In addition, their faces were misrecollected as more prototypically dominant in physical appearance than they actually were (Studies 1A, 1B, and 2). Furthermore, enhanced facial dominance affected social inferences, with evaluations such as competence and attractiveness being sensitive to the gender of the target person (Study 3B). Implications for research on power and face perception are discussed.
... For example, when asked to select images that represent the best likeness of themselves from photo albums, participants choose images that are less representative of their current appearance than images chosen by people with no prior familiarity (White, Burton, & Kemp, 2015). Previous studies also report systematic biases to choose images of their own face as better likenesses when they have been digitally altered to be more typical (Allen, Brady, & Tredoux, 2009), more attractive (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008;Zell & Balcetis, 2012), and more trustworthy (Verosky & Todorov, 2010); perhaps reflecting a general bias to evaluate oneself more favorably than others (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008;cf. Brown, 2012). ...
... In the "Selection experiment," although we observed overall costs within each social network context, costs were nevertheless specific to impressions of trustworthiness and competence and were not observed for attractiveness. Previous studies have shown that people perceive their own face to be both more trustworthy (Verosky & Todorov, 2010) and more attractive than other people's faces (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008;Zell & Balcetis, 2012). Explanations of self-selection costs in terms of self-enhancing biases are not able to account for the fact that we observed costs in one trait evaluation but not the other. ...
People draw automatic social inferences from photos of unfamiliar faces and these first impressions are associated with important real-world outcomes. Here we examine the effect of selecting online profile images on first impressions. We model the process of profile image selection by asking participants to indicate the likelihood that images of their own face (“self-selection”) and of an unfamiliar face (“other-selection”) would be used as profile images on key social networking sites. Across two large Internet-based studies (n = 610), in line with predictions, image selections accentuated favorable social impressions and these impressions were aligned to the social context of the networking sites. However, contrary to predictions based on people’s general expertise in self-presentation, other-selected images conferred more favorable impressions than self-selected images. We conclude that people make suboptimal choices when selecting their own profile pictures, such that self-perception places important limits on facial first impressions formed by others. These results underscore the dynamic nature of person perception in real-world contexts.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s41235-017-0058-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
... near) future is increasingly less colorful (i.e., more BW) imagery, they relied on an image matching method that requires participants to select a picture that best matches how they visualized an event. Although this methodology is commonly used to assess visual representations (Epley and Whitchurch 2008;Zell and Balcetis 2012), it is possible that some methodological artifacts of the task produced our results. For example, people may have selected more BW pictures not because they imagined the events in BW, but because they imagined the events in different colors than those presented in the target pictures. ...
This research investigates the effect of temporal distance on how consumers “see” the future through their mind’s eye. Drawing from construal level and visual perception theories, we propose that shape (vs. color) is a high-level (vs. low-level) visual feature. As construal of the distant (vs. near) future generally focuses on high-level (vs. low-level) features, when consumers visualize the distant (vs. near) future, they should engage in processing that captures shape (vs. color): namely, imagery that is relatively more black-and-white (vs. colorful). Experiment 1 establishes that shape is a constant focus of visualization regardless of the temporal distance of future events, whereas the focus on color decreases as temporal distance increases. Using image matching, image re-construction, and behavioral response time measures, respectively, Experiments 2abc, 3, and 4 test and find that participants' visualization of the distant (vs. near) future is increasingly less colorful (i.e., more black-and-white). Experiment 5 establishes the underlying mechanism, showing that experimentally directing attention to high-level (vs. low-level) features directly promotes visualization that is less colorful (i.e., more black-and-white). Experiments 6ab apply these findings to visual communications, suggesting that marketing messages about distant (vs. near) future events lead to greater willingness-to-pay when presented alongside black-and-white (vs. color) images.
... This could lead unhappy participants to experience further NA, forming a vicious cycle (Mirams et al., 2014). Indeed, Zell and Balcetis (2012) note that higher level cognition and action are often based on lower-level, perceptual processes. ...
... Moreover, social comparisons are thought to shape our selfevaluations (e.g. Festinger, 1954;Tao, Zhang, Li, & Geng, 2012) and even shape our self-image (e.g., Zell & Balcetis, 2012). Using an adapted version of Epley and Whitchurch's paradigm, Zell and Balcetis (2012) found that after viewing same-gender attractive models, students rated themselves as less attractive and selected a less attractive version of their face as their own out of a line-up. ...
... Festinger, 1954;Tao, Zhang, Li, & Geng, 2012) and even shape our self-image (e.g., Zell & Balcetis, 2012). Using an adapted version of Epley and Whitchurch's paradigm, Zell and Balcetis (2012) found that after viewing same-gender attractive models, students rated themselves as less attractive and selected a less attractive version of their face as their own out of a line-up. It is possible, therefore, that mood congruent social comparisons (judging oneself favourably in comparison to a stranger when in a positive mood/judging ones' self unfavourably when in a negative mood) could exacerbate the effect of mood on self-image. ...
Mood can bias the judgements people make about themselves and how people compare themselves to others. However, it is not yet clear whether mood also affects appearance-based self-evaluations and social comparisons. Given the importance of perceived health status for well-being, we investigated the effect of mood on self-image and social comparisons of healthiness during two versions of a face health judgement task. Thirty participants judged how they felt compared to healthy and unhealthy looking versions of their own (self version) and a stranger's face (stranger version), after a positive, negative and neutral mood induction. The effect of mood was dependent on self/stranger task order. Although mood did not affect face health judgement for participants who initially judged themselves against their own face, it did affect face health judgement for participants who initially judged themselves in comparison to a stranger's face. After the positive and negative mood inductions, these participants judged themselves as equivalent to healthier/unhealthier looking versions of their own and stranger's faces, respectively. Thus, social comparisons of facial healthiness could provide a perceptual measure of state well-being.
