Holistic processing underlies gender judgments of faces

In three experiments, we investigated whether holistic processing underlies gender judgments about faces. Chinese participants were asked to make gender judgments for inverted, scrambled, or composite faces. Results showed that judgments were dramatically impaired by these manipulations (as compared...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Attention, perception & psychophysics perception & psychophysics, 2010-04, Vol.72 (3), p.591-596
Main Authors: Zhao, Mintao, Hayward, William G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Brief Reports
Cognitive Psychology
Discrimination Learning
Ethnic Groups
Face
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender Discrimination
Humans
Judgment
Male
Males
Perception
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Studies
Vision
Visual Fields
Visual Perception
Whites
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Summary:In three experiments, we investigated whether holistic processing underlies gender judgments about faces. Chinese participants were asked to make gender judgments for inverted, scrambled, or composite faces. Results showed that judgments were dramatically impaired by these manipulations (as compared with performance for normal upright faces), demonstrating three hallmark effects of holistic face processing that have been observed in perception of face identity. Whether the test faces were Chinese or Caucasian showed no effect on holistic processing of gender perception, in contrast to studies of identity analysis. These results suggest that holistic processing is a general mechanism for different aspects of face perception and are consistent with the idea that physiognomic properties that determine the gender of a face are universal, rather than race specific.
ISSN:1943-3921
1943-393X
DOI:10.3758/APP.72.3.591