Facial Perception: Dominance and Competence

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how varying levels of ancestral productivity affect how people perceive signs of dominance and competence from facial characteristics. Prior research has shown how the details on someone’s face can impact how others perceive them (Willis, J., & Todorov, A. 2006) and the significance of how it influences our day-to-day lives. This study performed a survey in which participants would answer questions on how dominant or competent they perceived high, low, and neutral productivity faces to be. For dominance ratings, results supported the hypothesis that low-productivity faces would have lower ratings than neutral faces, and high productivity faces received higher ratings. For competence, lower productivity faces received lower ratings than neutral faces, and there was no significant difference between neutral and high productivity ratings.