People judge facial attractiveness more accurately for female faces while giving more accurate wealth judgments for male faces

Gender Biases in the Accuracy of Facial Judgments: Facial Attractiveness and Perceived Socioeconomic Status. Yue Qi and Jia Ying. Front. Psychol., May 31 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.884888

Product: Many studies demonstrate that people form their first impression of a stranger based on facial appearance, and these impressions influence their subsequent decisions and behaviors. However, much less research has examined the factors that moderate the accuracy of first impressions based on a photo of face. The present study included three experiments to explore gender differences in the accuracy of impressions based on faces. The results showed that people judge facial attractiveness more accurately for female faces than for male faces while giving more accurate wealth judgments for male faces than for female faces. Interestingly, although we did not find a significant correlation between confidence ratings and the accuracy of wealth rating, we recognized a significant moderate correlation between confidence ratings and the accuracy of attractiveness ratings when female participants rated male faces. To our knowledge, the present study is the first to reveal gender biases in the accuracy of impression judgments based on facial appearance. These findings imply a significant influence of traditional gender roles on accurate facial judgments.

General Discussion

The present study showed that people give more accurate judgments of the facial attractiveness of female faces than of male faces and give more accurate wealth judgments for male faces than for female faces. To our knowledge, the current research is the first to show gender biases in the accuracy of impressions formed from faces. This indicates an important role of facial gender in shaping accurate first impressions.

The differences in judgment accuracy of male and female faces may be caused by differences in traditional gender roles. From an evolutionary perspective, these gender biases have been linked to the production and survival of offspring. A man’s reproductive potential is related more to his (economic) resources. In contrast, a woman’s reproductive potential is associated more closely with her health, which may be related to physical attractiveness (Luxen and Van De Vijver, 2006). Thus, females might be more familiar with others’ evaluations of their own facial attractiveness and thus achieve a higher level of consistency on self-other agreement. These results are also consistent with previous findings that facial gender is a salient facial cue in face processing and has an effect on other types of information (e.g., expression) processing (Liu et al., 2017). Moreover, Maner et al. (2003) found that both male and female observers selectively focus on physically attractive female targets according to the targets’ facial photos, suggesting that people care more about female facial attractiveness than male facial attractiveness. The more attention that is paid to female facial attractiveness, the more accurate the judgments that can be made based on facial appearance.

In contrast to the findings about female faces in Studies 1 and 2, Study 3 revealed that people tend to rate perceived socioeconomic status (SES) more accurately for male faces than for female faces. In mate selection, SES is of great significance to males since females are more attentive to resources that can be invested in themselves and their offspring (Wang et al., 2018). Thus, on the one hand, males will expend more effort to increase their SES and recognize SES differences between themselves and competitors so that they can attract potential mates. On the other hand, females will seek as much evidence as possible to confirm their judgment of males’ SES to help them “make a good choice”. Moreover, because the number of male billionaires is larger than that of females all over the world (Wai, 2014; Forbes, 2022) and there is more media news or information related to wealthy males than to wealthy females, people may learn more useful cues to help them rate males’ SES, even using only faces. Therefore, people’s gender stereotypes are enhanced when SES is highly correlated with males in society. Similar gender bias is also found in research on how masculine facial cues play a key role in competence impressions (Oh et al., 2019). When people evaluate traits or personalities, the more evidence they accumulate and the more information they have observed and mastered, the higher the accuracy of their judgments and evaluations will be (Watson et al., 2000; Biesanz et al., 2007). These findings provide cross-validation of our hypothesis that people may pay more attention to the characteristics that are consistent with gender roles (e.g., the attractiveness of women, the socioeconomic status of men), thus accumulating more evidence that helps them make more accurate judgments.

The current findings regarding gender bias show the great social influences on gender differences. The higher accuracy of judgments of the facial attractiveness of female faces and of the wealth of male faces indicates that people can make relatively accurate judgments about these factors based only on faces. More importantly, it suggests that when the characteristics are consistent with gender stereotypes and are emphasized by society, people assign more attention to the characteristics of the gender. As a result, by accumulating more experience and evidence, people can make more accurate judgments. On the positive side, people can quickly establish a relatively accurate impression of some characteristics that fit gender stereotypes to benefit their daily life interactions. However, the restricted accuracy of impressions based on face photos should receive more research attention. On the negative side, people put little effort into learning about characteristics that conflict with gender stereotypes, which might aggravate gender stereotypes across society. In addition, in Studies 2 and 3, we found that males rated characteristics that conflict with gender stereotypes more accurately than females did, which suggests that males might be affected less by gender stereotypes. This finding could be further examined in future research.

The analysis of confidence ratings implies that although the participants were able to make relatively accurate judgments, they may have struggled to be aware of their judgment accuracy. Participants might not realize whether they have extracted useful information from faces to help them make judgments. In addition, it is possible that they might not be sure of the gap between their own standards and external standards while giving their ratings. However, in Study 2, the significant moderate correlation between confidence ratings and rating accuracy when female participants rated male faces is interesting and is in line with research showing that females exhibit higher levels of interpersonal sensitivity than males (Chan et al., 2010). Despite female participants’ higher accuracy when rating female faces, they had a clearer awareness when rating male faces. When rating male faces, even though male participants rated them more accurately, they failed to recognize their rating accuracy. However, we did not find a similar result in Study 3. Overall, these results show that although gender bias exists in terms of judgment accuracy, people do not have a relatively clear awareness of their rating behaviors and the gender bias of their judgments. This means that during the rating process, people might have underlying evaluation references that they are unaware of, which could be explored more thoroughly in the future.