Robust Medusa effect across facial manipulations

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Computer Vision

Background:

• Visual representations influence mind perception.
• The Medusa effect describes reduced mind attribution for indirectly presented individuals (e.g., photo of a photo, L2) versus directly presented individuals (e.g., photo, L1).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the robustness and generalizability of the Medusa effect.
• To examine the effect of cultural origin and facial manipulations on mind perception.

Main Methods:

• Eight experiments were conducted using direct (L1) and nested (L2) facial representations.
• Stimuli included novel Asian and artificial faces, with manipulations like inversion, masks, sunglasses, and spatial scrambling.
• Participants judged agency, experience, and realness.

Main Results:

• Participants consistently attributed less mind to L2 representations than L1.
• The Medusa effect was observed for both human and artificial faces.
• The effect persisted across all tested facial manipulations, including inversion and scrambling.

Conclusions:

• Mind perception is significantly influenced by the structural presentation of a face, not just its content.
• The representational level, introduced by additional depiction layers, plays a crucial role in how we perceive others' minds.