The biasing effects of appearances go beyond physical attractiveness and mating motives

2017 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Y. Olivola ◽  
Alexander Todorov
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Experimental Economic ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Social Attributions ◽  
Biasing Effects

AbstractThe influence of appearances goes well beyond physical attractiveness and includes the surprisingly powerful impact of “face-ism” – the tendency to stereotype individuals based on their facial features. A growing body of research has revealed that these face-based social attributions bias the outcomes of labor markets and experimental economic games in ways that are hard to explain via evolutionary mating motives.

scholarly journals Can we reduce facial biases? Persistent effects of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Jaeger ◽  
Alexander Todorov ◽  
Anthony M Evans ◽  
Ilja van Beest
Keyword(s):  
Relevant Information ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Guilty Verdict ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Facial Information ◽  
Final Verdict ◽  
Biasing Effects ◽  
Trait Impressions ◽  
Facial Trustworthiness

Trait impressions from faces influence many consequential decisions even in situations in which decisions should not be based on a person’s appearance. Here, we test (a) whether people rely on trait impressions when making legal sentencing decisions and (b) whether two types of interventions—educating decision-makers and changing the accessibility of facial information—reduce the influence of facial stereotypes. We first introduced a novel legal decision-making paradigm. Results of a pretest (n = 320) showed that defendants with an untrustworthy (vs. trustworthy) facial appearance were found guilty more often. We then tested the effectiveness of different interventions in reducing the influence of facial stereotypes. Educating participants about the biasing effects of facial stereotypes reduced explicit beliefs that personality is reflected in facial features, but did not reduce the influence of facial stereotypes on verdicts (Study 1, n = 979). In Study 2 (n = 975), we presented information sequentially to disrupt the intuitive accessibility of trait impressions. Participants indicated an initial verdict based on case-relevant information and a final verdict based on all information (including facial photographs). The majority of initial sentences were not revised and therefore unbiased. However, most revised sentences were in line with facial stereotypes (e.g., a guilty verdict for an untrustworthy-looking defendant). On average, this actually increased facial bias in verdicts. Together, our findings highlight the persistent influence of trait impressions from faces on legal sentencing decisions.

Computation of Efficient Nash Equilibria for Experimental Economic Games

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 197
Author(s):  
Rhoda Ong'awa Esilaba ◽  
Edgar O. Otumba ◽  
Alfred W. Manyonge
Keyword(s):  
Nash Equilibria ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Experimental Economic

Book Reviews

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-381
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Experimental Economic

Jeffrey V. Butler of EIEF and University of Nevada, Las Vegas reviews “Experimenting with Social Norms: Fairness and Punishment in Cross-Cultural Perspective”, by Jean Ensminger and Joseph Henrich. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Seventeen papers, plus thirteen case studies available for download only, explore the historical emergence of prosocial norms and their relationship to economic growth. Papers in the text discuss theoretical foundations─the coevolution of social norms, intrinsic motivation, markets, and the institutions of complex societies; cross-cultural methods, sites, and variables; major empirical results─markets, religion, community size, and the evolution of fairness and punishment; and double-blind dictator games in Africa and the United States─differential experimenter effects. Case studies available for download discuss Hadza behavior in three experimental economic games; the effects of sanctions and third-party enforcers on generosity in Papua New Guinea; an experimental investigation of dictators, ultimatums, and punishment; behavioral experiments in the Yasawa Islands, Fiji; economic game behavior among the Shuar; economic experimental game results from the Sursurunga of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea; Maragoli and Gusii farmers in Kenya─strong collective action and high prosocial punishment; sharing, subsistence, and social norms in Northern Siberia; the influence of property rights and institutions for third-party sanctioning on behavior in three experimental economic games; cooperation and punishment in an economically diverse community in highland Tanzania; social preferences among the people of Sanquianga in Colombia; the effects of birthplace and current context on other-regarding preferences in Accra; and prosociality in rural America─evidence from dictator, ultimatum, public goods, and trust games.” Ensminger is Edie and Lew Wasserman Professor of Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. Henrich is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition, and Coevolution in the Economics and Psychology Departments at the University of British Columbia.

Mapping the terra incognita of economic cognition will require an experimental paradigm that incorporates context

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron D. Lightner ◽  
Edward H. Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Terra Incognita ◽  
Experimental Economic ◽  
High Level ◽  
Economic Studies ◽  
Psychological Concepts

AbstractResearchers, including Boyer & Petersen (B&P), commonly use experimental economic studies to draw their conclusions. These studies conventionally strip away context and present participants only with abstract rules. Because context is a strictly necessary component of the decision-making process, it is not clear that inferences about high-level folk psychological concepts (e.g., rationality) can be drawn from decontextualized economic games.

Can We Detect Cooperators by Looking at Their Face?

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-François Bonnefon ◽  
Astrid Hopfensitz ◽  
Wim De Neys
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Body Language ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Video Clips ◽  
Personal Interactions ◽  
Minimal Information ◽  
Better Than

Humans are willing to cooperate with each other for mutual benefit—and to accept the risk of exploitation. To avoid collaborating with the wrong person, people sometimes attempt to detect cooperativeness in others’ body language, facial features, and facial expressions. But how reliable are these impressions? We review the literature on the detection of cooperativeness in economic games, from those with protocols that provide a lot of information about players (e.g., through long personal interactions) to those with protocols that provide minimal information (e.g., through the presentation of passport-like pictures). This literature suggests that people can detect cooperativeness with a small but significant degree of accuracy when they have interacted with or watched video clips of other players, but that they have a harder time extracting information from pictures. The conditions under which people can detect cooperation from pictures with better than chance accuracy suggest that successful cooperation detection is supported by purely intuitive processes.

Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Attractiveness

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 154-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Fink ◽  
Ian Penton-Voak
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Psychology ◽  
Physical Attractiveness ◽  
Facial Attractiveness ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Sexually Dimorphic ◽  
Human Face ◽  
Healthy Individuals ◽  
Mate Quality ◽  
Considerable Controversy

The human face communicates an impressive number of visual signals. Although adults' ratings of facial attractiveness are consistent across studies, even cross-culturally, there has been considerable controversy surrounding attempts to identify the facial features that cause faces to be judged attractive or unattractive. Studies of physical attractiveness have attempted to identify the features that contribute to attractiveness by studying the relationships between attractiveness and (a) symmetry, (b) averageness, and (c) nonaverage sexually dimorphic features (hormone markers). Evolutionary psychology proposes that these characteristics all pertain to health, suggesting that humans have evolved to view certain features as attractive because they were displayed by healthy individuals. However, the question remains how single features that are considered attractive relate to each other, and if they form a single ornament that signals mate quality. Moreover, some researchers have recently explained attractiveness preferences in terms of individual differences that are predictable. This article briefly describes what is currently known from attractiveness research, reviews some recent advances, and suggests areas for future researchers' attention.

Split-Second Trustworthiness Detection From Faces in an Economic Game

2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 231-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim De Neys ◽  
Astrid Hopfensitz ◽  
Jean-François Bonnefon
Keyword(s):  
Exposure Time ◽  
Trust Game ◽  
Facial Features ◽  
Economic Games ◽  
Intuitive Process ◽  
Economic Decisions ◽  
Economic Interactions ◽  
Better Than

Abstract. Economic interactions often imply to gauge the trustworthiness of others. Recent studies showed that when making trust decisions in economic games, people have some accuracy in detecting trustworthiness from the facial features of unknown partners. Here we provide evidence that this face-based trustworthiness detection is a fast and intuitive process by testing its performance at split-second levels of exposure. Participants played a Trust game, in which they made decisions whether to trust another player based on their picture. In two studies, we manipulated the exposure time of the picture. We observed that trustworthiness detection remained better than chance for exposure times as short as 100 ms, although it disappeared with an exposure time of 33 ms. We discuss implications for ongoing debates on the use of facial inferences for social and economic decisions.

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