Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Testing the Effects of Facial Sexual Dimorphism on Men’s Selective Attention, Implicit Association, and Decision Making

人脸是人类互动过程中的主要关注点。虽然人类发现不同人的脸很容易识别，但实际上脸是高度可变的。面孔变化的一种方式是男性到女性的维度。与女性面孔相比，男性面孔具有更宽的下巴、更厚的眉脊和更长的下巴。研究表明，人们认为男性化的面孔属于身体更占主导地位和更具侵略性的个体。这些看法可能会影响日常生活中的决策，例如我们选择谁来领导组织或执行某些任务。虽然以前的研究有助于我们理解个体对支配地位的看法，但它并没有揭示他们为什么这样做。这个项目研究了不同的男性面孔如何吸引注意力，影响记忆，并影响对威胁的感知。一种假设是，面部男性化程度高的面孔被认为更具威胁性，这会增加他们的注意力和记忆力。这项研究的结果有可能告知我们的认知过程的理解，我们的脸的看法，并提供了一个方法论基础，进行未来的研究，以了解为什么高度男性化的个人被对待与deference.Experiments可以提供测试的影响，面部男子气概对观察者的优势和威胁的看法。然而，大多数测试操纵面部性别二态性对观察者感知的影响的实验都依赖于强迫选择范式，这有显着的缺点。目前的研究使用了一种增强的方法来检验这一假设，即人类的注意力会自动优先处理男性化的面孔，而观察者对男性化面孔的选择性注意是因为它们发出了威胁的信号。研究的参与者是大学生。基本的实验范式有参与者完成自我报告的身体优势，状态和特质焦虑水平，以及他们的身体尺寸（身高，体重，握力和胸部力量）的评级。这些措施，收集实验前，被用来量化参与者的身体优势和焦虑，并作为协变量的分析。参与者完成四个实验之一。点探针和侧卫任务都测试了参与者是否在没有被指示的情况下选择性地注意男性化的男性的脸。对于点探测任务，参与者呈现两张不同的男性面孔，然后呈现一个目标形状，正方形或菱形。参与者必须尽快对形状进行分类。对于侧翼任务，参与者判断中央呈现的目标字母的方向（即，直立或倒置），而忽略两侧的面孔在男性气质上的变化。词汇判断任务测试参与者是否自动将这些面孔与威胁的概念联系起来。参与者判断一个字母串是否是一个单词，而忽略了同时呈现的性别二态性不同的面孔。字母串的一部分是与威胁概念相关的词。参与者被认为是最快的分类字母串作为一个词时，它是一个威胁词，并提出了脸已男性化。在评级识别记忆测试中，参与者看到一系列性别不同的男性面孔，并要求他们对每个人的危险程度进行评级。然后，参与者完成识别记忆阶段，在这个阶段，他们会看到另一系列的面孔，其中一些是在评级阶段呈现的，并被要求判断他们是否在评级阶段看到了每一张面孔。假设威胁刺激在初始编码时更突出，则对被认为更具威胁性的男性化面孔的记忆力更好，通过识别记忆任务进行评估。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Faces are the primary focus of attention during human interaction. Although humans find different people’s faces easy to recognize, faces are in fact highly variable. One way in which faces vary is on the masculine-to-feminine dimension. Masculine faces are those with broader jaws, thicker brow ridges and longer chins than feminine faces. Studies have shown that people rate masculine faces as belonging to more physically dominant and aggressive individuals. These perceptions may affect decision making in everyday life, such as who we choose to lead organizations or perform certain tasks. While previous studies have aided our understanding of individuals’ perceptions of dominance, it does not reveal why they do so. This project examines how faces differing in masculinity capture attention, affect memory, and impact perceptions of threat. A hypothesis is that faces with high levels of facial masculinity are perceived as more threatening and that this increases their attention and memory for them. Results of this research have the potential to inform our understanding of the cognitive processes which underlie our face perceptions and provide a methodological basis to conduct future studies to understand why highly masculine individuals are treated with deference.Experiments can provide tests of the effects of facial masculinity on observers’ dominance and threat perceptions. However, most experiments testing the effects of manipulating facial sexual dimorphism on observers’ perceptions have relied on forced choice paradigms, which have significant drawbacks. The current research uses an enhanced methodology to examine the hypothesis that human attention automatically prioritizes processing of masculine faces, and that observers’ selective attention to masculine faces is because they signal threat. Participants in the study are college students. The basic experimental paradigm has participants complete self-reported ratings of physical dominance, state and trait anxiety levels, and their body dimensions (height, weight, grip strength and chest strength). These measures, collected prior to the experiments, are used to quantify participants physical dominance and anxiety and serve as covariates in the analyses. Participants complete one of four experiments. Both the Dot Probe and Flanker Task test if participants selectively attend to masculinized men’s faces when they are not instructed to. For the Dot Probe task, participants are presented with two faces varying in masculinity, which is followed by the presentation of a target shape, either a square or diamond. Participants must classify the shape as quickly as they can. For the Flanker Task, participants judge the orientation of a centrally presented target letter (i.e., upright, or upside-down) while ignoring flanking faces varying in masculinity. The lexical decision task tests whether participants automatically associate these faces with the concept of threat. Participants judge whether a letter string is a word, while ignoring a simultaneously presented face varying on sexual dimorphism. A portion of the letter strings are words related to the concept of threat. Participants are assumed to be fastest to classify a letter string as a word when it is a threat word, and the presented face has been masculinized. In the rating recognition memory test participants are presented with a sequence of men’s faces varying on sexual dimorphism and asked to rate how dangerous each man appears. Participants then complete a recognition memory phase, in which they are presented with another sequence of faces, some of which were presented in the rating phase, and asked to judge whether they saw each face in the rating phase. Better memory for masculinized faces that are perceived as more threatening, assuming threat stimuli is more salient at initial encoding, is assessed with the recognition memory task.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.