Stereotypic Representations of Groups Shape Facial Impressions of Group Members

Facial impressions (e.g., trustworthy, assertive) have long been thought to be evoked by morphological variation (e.g., upturned mouth) in a universal, fixed manner. However, recent research suggests that these impressions vary considerably across different perceivers and targets’ social group memberships. We investigated whether stereotypes at the intersection of race and gender may be a critical factor underlying this variability in facial impressions. In Study 1, we found that not only did facial impressions vary by targets’ gender and race, but the structure of these impressions was predicted by the structure of stereotype knowledge. Study 2 extended these findings by demonstrating that individual differences in perceivers’ own unique stereotype associations predicted the structure of their own facial impressions. Together, the findings suggest that the structure of our impressions of others’ faces is driven not only by the morphological variation of the face, but also our own learned stereotypes about social groups.

面部印象（如可信、自信等）长期以来被认为是由普遍固定的形态变化（如上扬的嘴唇）所唤起。然而，近期研究指出，这些印象在不同感知者和目标者的社会群体成员身份之间存在着显著的差异。本研究旨在探究种族和性别交叉处的刻板印象是否可能是面部印象这种差异背后的关键因素。在第一项研究中，我们发现面部印象不仅因目标者的性别和种族而异，而且这些印象的结构还可由刻板印象知识体系所预测。在第二项研究中，我们进一步扩展了这些发现，表明感知者自身独特的刻板印象关联的差异能够预测他们自身面部印象的结构。综上所述，这些发现表明，我们对他人面部印象的结构不仅受到面部形态变化的影响，还受到我们自身关于社会群体的学习形成的刻板印象的驱动。