Perception of Gender

Perception of Gender

and

Perception of Gender in Inverted Faces

By:
Martha Arterberry and Bill Wilson
Gettysburg College
Gettysburg, PA
arterber@gettysburg.edu

When determining whether a person is male or female, children and adults often report that they make their judgments based on specific features such as hair length, clothing, or voice pitch. However, males and females can wear the same types of clothing, both males and females can have long or short hair, and both males and females have high and low pitched voices. Thus, these cues may not be the most reliable for gender classification. Moreover, in the absence of facial hair or makeup, we still are able to categorize people according to gender. This study explores the role that facial features may play in cueing gender.

The purpose of the Perception of Gender Study is to determine which, if any, facial features provide adequate information for classifying a face as male or female in a photograph. Previous work has identified the eye and brow region as being particularly important when viewing a face straight on (Campbell, Benson, Wallace, Doesbergh, & Coleman, 1999) and nose/chin protuberance is an important cue in 3/4 views (Bruce, Burton, Hanna, Healey, Mason, Coombes, Fright, & Linney, 1993). Participants will view faces presented in three conditions (see examples below) -- "full view" in which the full face is visible but the hair and neck are covered, "eyes only" in which only the eye and brow region is visible, and "mouth only" in which only the mouth and chin region is visible. Participants will be asked to judge the gender of each photograph and to indicate their confidence.

We can perceive and discriminate objects based on either a single feature (a featural process) or based on the relation between features (a configural process). Face perception is often described as a configural process, and it is possible that the processing of gender in faces is a configural process rather than a featural process because it appears that the eye in relation to the brow is effective information; whereas one feature alone, such as length of the nose, is not as effective for cueing gender (e.g., Roberts & Bruce, 1988). A direct test of whether faces are processed configurally or featurally involves presenting participants with inverted faces. It is well documented that recognition of familiar and unfamiliar faces is impaired when they are inverted, and this impairment is ascribed to the disruption of configural processing (e.g., Carey & Diamond, 1977). Similar inversion effects have been found for gender perception in profile, 3/4 view, and en face static facial stimuli (Bruce et al., 1993). For example, in Bruce et al's study (Experiment 3), error rates in judging gender increased from 4.2% to 19% when the faces were inverted.

The purpose of the Perception of Gender in Inverted Faces study is to test whether gender perception in inverted faces is less accurate than the perception of gender in upright faces. Participants will view faces presented in three conditions (see examples below) -- "full view" in which the full face is visible but the hair and neck are covered, "eyes only" in which only the eye and brow region is visible, and "mouth only" in which only the mouth and chin region is visible. Participants will be asked to judge the gender of each photograph and to indicate their confidence.

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Design

The independent variables are view of face (3 levels: full, eyes only, mouth only) and gender of face (2 levels: male, female). There are 8 male models and 8 female models and they were photographed in each condition. Participants will judge each face in each condition once, resulting in a total of 48 trials. The dependent variables are number of correct responses and confidence.
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Analysis

The data will be presented as the number correct and the mean confidence per gender and view condition.

Number Correct Out of 8
Full View		Eyes Only		Mouth Only
Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female

Mean Confidence of Judgement
Full View		Eyes Only		Mouth Only
Male	Female	Male	Female	Male	Female

Analysis of variance will be conducted on each dependent measure using a 3 (view) by 2 (face gender) within-subjects design. Additional variables may be included, such as participant gender and age.
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References

Bruce, V., Burton, A. M., Hanna, E., Healey, P., Mason, O., Coombes, A., Fright, R., & Linney, A. (1993). Sex discrimination: how do we tell the difference between male and female faces? Perception, 22, 131-152.

Campbell, R., Benson, P. J., Wallace, S. B., Doesbergh, S., & Coleman, M. (1999). More about brows: How poses that change brow position affect perceptions of gender. Perception, 28, 489-504.

Carey, S., & Diamond, R. (1977). From piecemeal to configurational representation of faces. Science, 195, 312-314.

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