New research in the European Journal of Social Psychology provides interesting insights into social perceptions related to androgyny, which refers to a blend of characteristics traditionally associated with both masculinity and femininity.
The findings indicate while androgynous faces are more challenging to classify into binary sex categories, they are not judged negatively for this ambiguity. In fact, the study found an overall positive bias towards androgynous faces, particularly when compared to masculine ones, suggesting a complex relationship between facial recognition, gender perception, and social judgment.
Inspired by the uncanny valley hypothesis — originally proposed to explain our eerie responses to almost-human figures — the authors behind the new study sought to understand if the ambiguity in categorizing androgynous faces might elicit similar unease or negative biases. Previous studies had suggested that difficulty in categorization could trigger negative emotional responses, affecting social judgments.
“My background is in moral psychology. Since the first time that I read about the uncanny valley hypothesis, I felt that there was something going on about that proposal that may have some moral implications,” said study author Antonio Olivera-La Rosa, a full professor at Luis Amigó Catholic University in Medellín.
“It wasn’t until some years ago that I started to look for a potential link between the feeling of uncanniness and moral inferences from faces. Specifically, I was focused on whether a ‘weird outside, weird inside’ moral heuristic shapes first impressions from faces, and whether difficulties in face processing may be involved in such a mechanism.”
“Studying androgynous faces was an interesting challenge. These types of faces are typically more difficult to classify into a binary sex category, which may cause perceptual disfluency. After meeting with Alessandro Ansani (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), all the ideas began to coalesce into a research program. This research was one of those rare cases of a true collaboration, a team effort involving two players who shared an equal workload.”
The researchers conducted a series of four online experiments, which engaged participants from Spanish-speaking and Italian populations, to assess whether the difficulty in categorizing androgynous faces into traditional gender categories influenced social judgments negatively. The experiments included 346 participants in total.
The core of the methodology involved a face evaluation task where participants were presented with a series of faces. These faces were categorized into three groups: androgynous, masculine, and feminine. The androgynous faces were created by morphing male and female faces to achieve a blend of gender characteristics, while masculine and feminine faces were selected for their clear representation of each category.
Participants were asked to categorize each face as either male or female as quickly and accurately as possible, with their response times being recorded. This task aimed to measure the ease or difficulty of categorizing androgynous faces compared to clearly gendered ones.
After the categorization task, participants viewed the faces again and rated them on several dimensions: trustworthiness, perceived creepiness (or uncanniness), and shared moral values. These ratings were captured using Likert scales, providing a quantitative measure of social judgments towards androgynous versus sex-typical faces.
A key finding of the study was the difficulty participants faced when categorizing androgynous faces as either male or female, with these faces requiring longer response times than clearly masculine or feminine faces. This observation was consistent across the various experiments and highlighted the cognitive challenge posed by gender ambiguity.
However, contrary to expectations that this difficulty might lead to negative perceptions, the study found that androgynous faces were often perceived more positively than masculine faces. Specifically, androgynous faces were rated as less creepy, more trustworthy, and more closely aligned with participants’ moral values compared to their masculine counterparts. The positive bias towards androgynous faces was evident across different cultural contexts, with similar patterns observed among participants from both Spanish-speaking and Italian backgrounds.
“Being more difficult to classify into a binary sex-category does not imply negative social judgments per se. Indeed, we found consistent evidence suggesting that androgynous faces may trigger an overall positive social bias in certain situations,” Olivera-La Rosa told PsyPost.
“We did not expect to find a positive bias towards androgynous faces at all! Indeed, previous research suggested that the opposite side of the coin would be expected. All things considered, I think that these surprising findings motivated us to go the ‘extra mile’ in this research.”
The study is not without its limitations. The exclusive use of online participants and synthetic face morphing might affect the generalizability of the findings to real-world interactions and perceptions. Furthermore, the positive bias identified raises questions about its underlying causes.
“It’s very important to emphasize this point: face perception and first impressions are just parts of our complex social cognition mechanisms, though they are significant ones. As such, we don’t rely solely on faces to infer people’s morality,” Olivera-La Rosa explained.
“In this study, we analyzed physical androgyny in a somewhat idealized setting. However, in real life, physical androgyny can be accompanied by gender identity androgyny, along with some of its behavioral connotations. We hope that our research will not be interpreted as evidence against the existence of prejudices towards individuals whose gender identity includes an androgynous appearance and/or behavior.”
Future research is encouraged to explore these findings in more diverse cultural settings and through different methodological lenses.
“More cross-cultural research is needed in face perception,” Olivera-La Rosa said. “First impressions matter no matter what you do for a living, and we owe ourselves a better understanding of how these silent cognitive shortcuts work in real life. Personally, I believe that knowledge on how we form first impressions from faces should not be exclusive to those of us who work on these issues. The same applies to knowledge on how the confirmation bias works, by the way.”
“Whether we like it or not, how a face is perceived impacts subsequent judgments of a target person,” the researcher added. “It is not difficult to see the consequences that these mechanisms can have in real life. A face that looks uncanny or untrustworthy may be perceived as guilty until proven otherwise, and the opposite can happen with a trustworthy face!”
The study, “Moral inferences from androgynous faces are beyond categorical uncertainty: Evidence of a positive bias towards androgynous targets,” was published February 28, 2024.
