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Physical Strength as a Cue to Dominance: A Data-Driven Approach.
Hugo Toscano1, Thomas W Schubert2, Ron Dotsch3
1Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social, Portugal toscano.hugo@gmail.com.
Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
|October 21, 2016
Summary
Social dominance and physical strength judgments yield highly similar facial representations. While strength can be perceived from dominance cues, perceived dominance is not reliably inferred from physical strength cues.
Area of Science:
- Social Psychology
- Perception Science
- Human Behavior
Background:
- Judgments of social dominance and physical strength influence social interactions and perceptions.
- Previous research suggests potential overlap in the cues used to infer these traits.
- A data-driven approach is needed to quantitatively assess the similarities and differences in facial representations of dominance and strength.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the similarities and differences between facial cues for social dominance and physical strength.
- To determine if facial representations of dominance and strength are distinguishable.
- To examine the directionality of cue utilization between dominance and strength.
Main Methods:
- Development of statistical face shape models based on judgments of dominance and physical strength.
- Participant testing to discriminate between faces generated by the dominance and strength models.
- Creation of a differential model to isolate unique facial cues for each trait and testing discrimination accuracy.
Main Results:
- Facial representations of dominance and physical strength were highly similar, with participants unable to reliably discriminate between them.
- A differential model successfully generated faces varying in strength independent of dominance, and vice versa.
- Participants could identify differences in physical strength but not in social dominance from the generated faces.
Conclusions:
- Facial representations of social dominance and physical strength are largely congruent.
- Physical strength appears to be a more dominant cue for perceived social dominance than vice versa.
- These findings suggest a hierarchical use of cues, where strength informs dominance judgments more than dominance informs strength judgments.
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