Consensus in Social Judgments of Faces Across World Regions is Driven by Effects of Distinctiveness on Perceptions of Prosociality, Rather Than Effects of Masculinity, 2023-2025

Social judgments of faces influence important social outcomes. Although many researchers have argued that facial masculinity plays a key role in perceptions of prosociality and dominance, whether these effects are consistent among people from different world regions is highly contentious. Consequently, we investigated possible relationships between masculinity and face ratings made by 11,484 participants from eleven world regions (Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Central America and Mexico, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Scandinavia, South America, United Kingdom, United States and Canada, Western Europe). Surprisingly, masculinity did not significantly predict perceived prosociality or dominance in any regions. By contrast, facial distinctiveness (i.e., atypicality) was significantly and negatively correlated with prosocial perceptions in all regions. Collectively, our results suggest that consensus in social judgments of faces among people from different world regions is driven by the effects of distinctiveness on prosocial perceptions (i.e., an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype), rather than the effects of masculinity. This research was supported by ESRC grant ES/X000249/1 awarded to BCJ and University of Strathclyde Global Research Awards to KL and JD. For the purpose of Open Access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.