Our impressions of others’ social class are influenced by specific facial features, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The findings indicate that wider, shorter, and flatter faces with downturned mouths and cooler, darker complexions are perceived as belonging to individuals of lower social class, while the opposite set of features is attributed to those of higher social class.
Previous research has established that people readily form judgments about others’ social class based on facial appearance, but the specific facial features driving these impressions remained a mystery. The new study aimed to bridge that gap, exploring how these perceptions correlate with broader stereotype-related judgments.
“People form a variety of different judgements from very little information about people, and will make judgments of what someone is like – including what they think their social class standing is – based on even just their facial appearance,” said R. Thora Bjornsdottir, an assistant professor at the University of Stirling in Scotland, who conducted this study as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow.
“I’m interested in judgments of social class because social class has such a pervasive impact on our lives, and even just how others perceive our social class standing can affect other judgments people make of us and what opportunities we may have. In this research, I wanted to break down these judgments of social class and understand what it is about people’s faces that explains these judgments. That can then give us an idea of how we might disrupt these judgments.”
To investigate these perceptions, Bjornsdottir and her colleagues recruited 30 young, White, native English-speaking British participants with middle socioeconomic backgrounds. Utilizing a sophisticated 3D generative model of the human face, the team generated a diverse array of photorealistic faces that varied in appearance. Each face was assessed on a seven-point scale, ranging from “richest” to “poorest,” with participants making their judgments based on their intuitive perceptions.
A similar experiment with another 30 participants focused on perceptions of social traits such as competence and trustworthiness. In total, 2,400 faces were rated, capturing a wide spectrum of morphological and complexion variations. This vast dataset allowed for the creation of detailed models mapping the facial features associated with perceptions of social class and various social traits.
Faces that participants judged as appearing to belong to a higher social class were characterized by certain distinct features: they were generally narrower, longer, and more protruding. These faces also exhibited upturned mouth corners, raised eyebrows, more closely spaced eyes, and lighter, warmer skin tones.
On the other hand, faces perceived as belonging to a lower social class displayed opposite traits. These faces were wider, shorter, and flatter, with downturned mouth corners, lowered eyebrows, more widely spaced eyes, and darker, cooler complexions.
Importantly, the researchers found that facial features associated with perceived social class closely mirrored those linked to important social traits. For example, features that led to perceptions of higher social class also correlated with perceptions of higher competence, warmth, and trustworthiness.
“Here, we showed that when people are making judgments of social class from faces, they do this using particular facial features (for example, wider and narrower faces with upturned mouth corners were judged to be rich),” Bjornsdottir told PsyPost. Importantly, all the features that people use to form judgments of social class, they also use to form judgments of traits that are stereotypically tied to social class, including their competence or their trustworthiness.”
“For example, wider and narrower faces look more competent and faces with upturned mouth corners look more trustworthy. What this suggests is that the reason certain facial features lead to social class judgments is because of these stereotypical associations. That is, because longer and narrower faces look more competent (which other research has tied to them looking less babyish), and we stereotype people of higher class standing as more competent, we therefore judge longer and narrower faces to be rich. In short, stereotypes may explain why we think certain faces look rich or poor.”
The study focused primarily on a specific demographic and evaluated perceptions of similarly homogenous faces. Future research could explore these dynamics across different cultures, social classes, and ethnicities to understand the global applicability of these findings.
“We only tested this in one cultural and racial group – White British people,” Bjornsdottir noted. “So some of the particular facial features we identified here may be culturally specific. We expect, though, that the overall conclusion (that stereotypes provide the link between specific facial features and social class judgments) should generalize to other cultures and racial/ethnic groups.”
Additionally, the researchers emphasize the subjective nature of social class perception, which may not accurately reflect the reality of individuals’ social standing or the complex factors contributing to these judgments. In other words, the findings reflect stereotypes rather than the actual appearance of individuals across social classes.
“It’s important to highlight that our findings don’t tell us anything about what people of different social class standing actually look like,” Bjornsdottir explained. “We were just looking at people’s subjective judgments here to get an idea of what facial features make someone look rich or poor.”
The study, “Social Class Perception Is Driven by Stereotype-Related Facial Features,” was authored by R. Thora Bjornsdottir, Laura B. Hensel, Jiayu Zhan, Oliver G. B. Garrod, Philippe G. Schyns, and Rachael E. Jack.
