Stereotypes bias social class perception from faces: The roles of race, gender, affect, and attractiveness.

People quickly form consequential impressions of others’ social class standing from nonverbal cues, including facial appearance. Extant research shows that perceivers judge faces that appear more positive, attractive, and healthy as higher-class, in line with stereotypes associating high class standing with happiness, attractiveness, and better wellbeing (which bear a kernel of truth). A wealth of research moreover demonstrates strong stereotypical associations between social class and both race and gender. The current work bridged these areas of inquiry to explore (1) intersectional biases in social class impressions from faces and (2) how associations between social class and attractiveness/health and affect can be used to shift social class impressions. Our studies found evidence of race and gender stereotypes impacting British perceivers’ social class judgments, with Black (vs. White and Asian) and female (vs. male) faces judged as lower in class. Furthermore, manipulating faces’ emotion expression shifted judgments of their social class, with variations in magnitude by faces’ race, such that emotion expressions shifted judgments of Black faces more than White faces. Finally, manipulating faces’ complexion to appear healthier/more attractive shifted social class judgments, with the magnitude of this varying by faces’ and perceivers’ race, suggesting a role of perceptual expertise. These findings demonstrate that stereotypes bias social class impressions and can be used to manipulate them

Social Class Perception Is Driven by Stereotype-Related Facial Features

Social class is a powerful hierarchy that determines many privileges and disadvantages. People form impressions of others’ social class (like other important social attributes) from facial appearance, and these impressions correlate with stereotype judgments. However, what drives these related subjective judgments remains unknown. That is, what makes someone look like they are of higher or lower social class standing (e.g., rich or poor) and how does this relate to harmful or advantageous stereotypes? We addressed this question using a perception-based data-driven method to model the specific 3D facial features that drive social class judgments and compared them to those of stereotype-related judgments (competence, warmth, dominance, trustworthiness), based on White Western culture participants and face stimuli. Using a complementary data-reduction analysis and machine learning approach, we show that social class judgments are driven by a unique constellation of facial features that reflect multiple embedded stereotypes: poor-looking (vs. rich-looking) faces are wider, shorter, and flatter with downturned mouths and darker, cooler complexions, mirroring features of incompetent, cold, and untrustworthy-looking (vs. competent, warm, and trustworthy-looking) faces. Our results reveal the specific facial features that underlie the connection between impressions of social class and stereotype-related social traits, with implications for central social perception theories, including understanding the causal links between stereotype knowledge and social class judgments. We anticipate that our results will inform future interventions designed to interrupt biased perception and social inequalities.Output Status: Forthcomin

Social Class Perception Is Driven by Stereotype-Related Facial Features

Social class is a powerful hierarchy that determines many privileges and disadvantages. People form impressions of others’ social class (like other important social attributes) from facial appearance, and these impressions correlate with stereotype judgments. However, what drives these related subjective judgments remains unknown. That is, what makes someone look like they are of higher or lower social class standing (e.g., rich or poor) and how does this relate to harmful or advantageous stereotypes? We addressed this question using a perception-based data-driven method to model the specific 3D facial features that drive social class judgments and compared them to those of stereotype-related judgments (competence, warmth, dominance, trustworthiness), based on White Western culture participants and face stimuli. Using a complementary data-reduction analysis and machine learning approach, we show that social class judgments are driven by a unique constellation of facial features that reflect multiple embedded stereotypes: poor-looking (vs. rich-looking) faces are wider, shorter, and flatter with downturned mouths and darker, cooler complexions, mirroring features of incompetent, cold, and untrustworthy-looking (vs. competent, warm, and trustworthy-looking) faces. Our results reveal the specific facial features that underlie the connection between impressions of social class and stereotype-related social traits, with implications for central social perception theories, including understanding the causal links between stereotype knowledge and social class judgments. We anticipate that our results will inform future interventions designed to interrupt biased perception and social inequalities

The Face of a Nation: The Effect of Nationality on Face Memory and Perception

Nationality is a pervasive group membership, and previous research has variously demonstrated its potency. However, little work has investigated nationality’s relationship with person perception, an area ripe for research in today’s globalized world. Thus, the aim of this thesis was to understand how nationality affects one’s perception and memory of others. I tested how randomly pairing faces with Canadian and foreign flags affected Canadians’ memory and trait evaluations for these faces and whether nationalism predicted ingroup favouritism. I also compared memory differences for ostensible national ingroup and outgroup members to that for university ingroup and outgroup members to determine the relative importance and strength of nationality over other social identities. Across three studies, I found that Canadian participants recognized faces randomly paired with the Canadian flag better than those paired with a foreign flag, suggesting that nationality labels can affect memory for others, which has important implications for cross-national interactions.M.A

Investigating the Pervasiveness of Social Class Cues in the Face

Previous research demonstrates the visibility of social class from the face, as cued by differences in resting facial affect in neutral faces and differences in attractiveness in dating profile photos. This research, however, operationalized social class using only one measure: income. Social class standing consists of various related facets in addition to income, however, including education, occupational prestige, and subjective social class. It therefore remains unknown whether accurate perceptions of social class are specific to income, or whether the face reflects social class more generally. To address this gap, I tested the visibility of social class in two stimulus sets, standardized photos of Canadian undergraduates and yearbook photos of Icelandic secondary school graduates, each of which defined social class somewhat differently. Previous work on the visibility of social class from the face furthermore focused only on whether perceivers could distinguish those of higher class from those of lower class, leaving unclear whether greater nuance in social class standing might be detectable from the face. To explore this question, I used more detailed measures of targets’ social class and asked perceivers to make judgments along multi-point scales. Extant work moreover only demonstrates the visibility of social class background, but other research on predictive judgments from the face (e.g., career success) suggests that the face may hold hints of future class standing—I tested this possibility here. Finally, the current work tested whether the facial cues to social class were consistent across economic context, photo type, and time. My findings indicate that facial appearance reflects the underlying construct of social class (rather than just certain facets of class) and does so in a graded manner, with different degrees of social class standing discernable from the face. Across both stimulus sets, greater Positivity (affect and warmth) and Attractiveness (attractiveness, competence, and health) cued higher background social class standing, suggesting that social class impacts appearance similarly across economic contexts. The cues to future social class diverged from this, however. Overall, this work provides a clearer idea of the relationship between social class standing and facial appearance.Ph.D