When your face doesn't fit: employment discrimination against people with facial disfigurements

This study aimed to investigate the recruitment prospects of people with facial disfigurement and a contrasting group of wheelchair users, representing a functional impairment with little aesthetic impact. Three applications were made to each of 144 vacancies using three CVs and cover letters rotated around conditions in which one applicant was described as a wheelchair user, another had a noncontagious facial disfigurement, and the third (control condition) had neither. There was evidence of discrimination against people with facial disfigurement in jobs requiring high (but not low) levels of customer contact, and against wheelchair users for jobs entailing high or low‐customer contact. Aesthetic considerations, social norms, and the possibility of stigma by association are discussed as potential underlying factors.     

Actual and perceived attitudes of wheelchair users

The sub-section of the disabled population who use a wheelchair has largely been neglected in the research Concerned with attitudes towards people with a disability. This study had two aims: firstly, to compare the attitudes towards wheelchair users of able-bodied people with people who actually use a wheelchair, and secondly, to examine the difference between how each group perceives the attitudes of the other towards this condition. The results revealed a number of interesting differences between the expressed attitudes of the two groups, although their overall mean scores were comparable. The wheelchair user group were found to believe non-disabled people to hold more negative attitudes than they actually expressed. A few age and sex differences were found, as well as a number of differences depending on whether the respondents had congenital or acquired disabilities. Finally, the amount of contact with those using wheelchairs was found to be associated with slightly more realistic attitudes among the non-disabled respondents. The results are discussed in the light of previous research, and possible reasons for, and ways to counter, the lack of empathy between the two groups are considered.     

The Relationship Between Facial Contact With a Pillow and Mood

Three studies examined the relationship between facial contact with a pillow and mood. In the first, 414 undergraduates described their face and body positions when sleeping and upon awakening, and their moods upon awakening. Results indicated that more negative moods were associated with increased facial contact with pillows. Then, 2 experiments manipulated participants' face and body positions while they lay down and listened to affectively neutral prose passages and musical selections. Participants evaluated the passages and music. Results of both experiments showed that increased facial contact with a pillow led to more negative evaluations. It is argued that these findings reflect effects of facial contact on mood, and are consistent with the facial feedback hypothesis. Possible alternative explanations are considered.     

Facial disfigurement in patients with head and neck cancer: the role of social self-efficacy.

This study investigated the moderating role of social self-efficacy (i.e., the belief that one is capable of exercising control over the reactions and openness of other people) with respect to the link between facial disfigurement and psychological and n = 76) as well as their physicians. In line with the hypotheses, the results revealed that the degree of facial disfigurement, as judged by patients as well as their physicians, was positively related to psychological distress and distress in reaction to unpleasant behavior of others, but only when patients did not feel self-efficacious in social encounters. Furthermore, social self-efficacy mitigated the positive link between facial disfigurement as judged by patients and social isolation.     

There’s More Than Meets the Eye: Facial Appearance and Evaluations of Transsexual People

Recent events have drawn attention to the prejudice and discrimination faced by transpeople; however, there is limited research on attitudes toward transpeople. We studied the effects of facial appearance on the evaluations of transsexuals in 239 heterosexual undergraduate students from the midwestern United States. Men had significantly more negative evaluations than women. The gender of the transsexual (male-to-female or female-to-male) had limited effects on evaluations; however, the transsexual whose facial appearance was congruent with their desired gender was perceived as more attractive than the transsexual whose facial appearance was incongruent. Negative evaluations were correlated with higher levels of transphobia and sexual prejudice. Further investigation is needed on the factors that influence prejudicial attitudes toward transpeople, including physical appearance.     

The psychological impact of facial changes in scleroderma

The physical disabilities associated with scleroderma are well known but the psychological impact of the condition has received less attention. Few studies have examined appearance related issues, most notably of the face. The aim of this study is to evaluate the psychological impact of facial, aesthetic and functional changes in scleroderma. One hundred seventy-one patients with a clinical diagnosis of scleroderma were recruited into the study. Digital photographs were objectively graded into groups based on severity of disfigurement as judged by an observer. Facial movement was recorded using a modified House-Brackmann Grading Scale. Psychological evaluation comprised the Derriford Appearance Scale short-form (DAS), the Noticeability and Worry score and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Severity of disfigurement predicted decreased mouth opening, the extent to which participants judged their appearance as noticeable to others, and the level of appearance-related concern as measured by the DAS24. There was an inverse relationship with age. Facial changes were ranked as the most worrying aspect of the condition. This study shows facial disfigurement impacts on patient with scleroderma independent of functional changes related to systemic disease. The major difficulty is with the perceived noticeably of the condition to other people and the resulting self-consciousness in social encounters.     

Incidental anger and the desire to evaluate

Our results indicate that people experiencing incidental anger are more likely than people in neutral and other emotional states to prefer to perform evaluative tasks, even though their anger may bias the evaluations they make. Induced anger increased participants’ desire to evaluate others’ ideas (Experiment 1) and made the evaluations of those ideas more negative in valence (Experiment 2). Anger increased the appeal of evaluating ideas when evaluations were expected to be largely negative but not when evaluations were expected to be positive (Experiments 3 and 4). Mediation analyses revealed that this willingness to evaluate when angry stems from a belief that evaluating others can leave angry people in a positive mood. Because people are often free to decide when to perform the tasks required of them, this tendency may have implications for how and when ideas are evaluated.     

THE TROUBLE WITH CHANGE:

Abstract— Past approaches to the self have emphasized people's desire for positive evaluations I suggest that this emphasis overlooks another powerful and important motive, the desire for evaluations that verify self-views. Among people with negative self-views, this desire for self-verification can override the desire for positive evaluations. For example, people with negative self-views seek relationship partners who view them negatively, elicit unfavorable evaluations from partners, and "see" more negativity in the reactions of others than is actually there Although these self-verification processes ordinarily impede progress in therapy, awareness of these processes can allow therapists to either circumvent them or actually use them in the service of fostering self-concept change.     

Nervous Instability and Genius: Military and Political Leaders

Participants (N = 106) performed an affective priming task with facial primes that varied in their skin tone and facial physiognomy, and, which were presented either in color or in gray-scale. Participants' racial evaluations were more positive for Eurocentric than for Afrocentric physiognomy faces. Light skin tone faces were evaluated more positively than dark skin tone faces, but the magnitude of this effect depended on the mode of color presentation. The results suggest that in affective priming tasks, faces might not be processed holistically, and instead, visual features of facial priming stimuli independently affect implicit evaluations.     

Gender and Suicide Risk: The Role of Wound Site

That males have higher suicide rates than females is one of the most empirically documented social facts in suicidology, but the reasons for this continue to be debated. For the present paper, we tested a neglected contributing factor to the gender suicide ratio: wound site or the area of the body that is wounded in firearm suicides. Males may have a higher suicide rate, in part, due to their greater likelihood than women for shooting themselves in the head as opposed to the body. This has been related to gender differences in fear of facial disfigurement and suicide intent. Data from the Wayne County Medical examiner's office regarding 807 suicides committed with firearms was analyzed. The dependent variable was dichotomous and referred to the location of the site of the wound: gunshot to the head vs. gunshot to the body. Controls for demographic covariates of suicide included age and race of the suicide victim. The results of the multivariate logistic regression analysis determined that women were 47% less apt than men to shoot themselves in the head. Further analysis determined that women were less apt than men to use shotguns and rifles in their suicides (weapons that make head shooting more awkward). The findings are consistent with the notion that women are more concerned than men with facial disfigurement, and that women have a lower desire to die than men.     

先入观念对情绪感染力的调节——以教学活动为例

从以往意识性情绪感染的研究中可以推断出, 情绪感染可以被后继的“观念”所调节, 这种观念可以被无意识提取, 那么情绪感染能不能被“先入观念”所调节呢, 即观念先于情绪感染而存在并对情绪感染的最终效果产生影响。实验情境以教学活动为例, 采用被试内设计, 通过实验前的指导语引导学生树立两种教师评价--“权威”教师(积极的先入观念)和“新手”教师(消极的先入观念), 然后给学生播放两位教师的三类教学视频--中性情绪、积极情绪、消极情绪的朗诵视频, 使用BioNeuro八通道生物反馈仪记录学生在观看视频时的生理指标, 每段视频播放后, 要求学生完成《教师课堂情绪感染力评价问卷(学生用)》。实验结果表明, 学生在观看“权威”教师视频时, 其注意力水平不受教师情绪效价的影响, 学生对“权威”教师均能保持较高的“专注”状态, 从而提高了“权威”教师的积极情绪感染力(易感性调节), 而对“新手”教师的“专注”程度较低, 从而削弱了“新手”教师的积极情绪感染力(免疫性调节)。“新手”教师的消极情绪感染力(倦怠)比“权威”教师的消极情绪感染力更强, 这与学生对“权威”教师的消极情绪进行“合理化”解释有关, 从而免疫了“权威”教师的消极情绪感染力。问卷调查结果也表明, 学生对“权威”教师的情绪感染力评价(无论是中性、积极或消极视频)要极其显著好于对“新手”教师的评价。由此说明, 先入观念对情绪感染的调节方式有两种：“专注”和“合理化”, 调节的结果也有两种：“易感性”与“免疫性”。     

Gaze avoidance: Personality and social judgments of people who avoid direct face-to-face contact

Some people maintain direct, face-to-face contact during interaction, whereas others avert their gaze or turn their face while interacting. Research on individual differences in gaze avoidance, while sparse, falls into two areas. One concerns the personality and psychopathology correlates of gaze aversion, and the other concerns social judgments made of people who avert their gaze during interaction. The findings generally show that gaze aversion is associated with unfavorable traits (shyness, social anxiety, risk for schizophrenia) and negative social evaluations (gaze averse people are rated as more deceptive and less sincere). The present study took advantage of an archival data set that contained facial photographs from which gaze avoidance could be scored. The correlates of gaze avoidance were different for men and women. Gaze avoidant men tended to be emotionally inhibited and overcontrolled, and reported a high incidence of various psychosomatic and physical symptoms. Gaze avoidant women, on the other hand, were high on measures of psychopathy, hysteria, and traditional femininity, they tended to have fewer physical symptoms. Gaze avoidant women were also viewed by others in a negative light (as being disagreeable, unconscientious, unattractive, and even somewhat lower on intelligence). In males, none of the social judgment variables correlated significantly with gaze avoidance. Results are discussed in terms of sex differences in the meaning and communicative function of this non-verbal social behavior.     

Attitudes towards single women

Empirical studies of attitudes towards, and the sociopsychological characteristics of single women have been neglected by social scientists. As a minority group, subject to normative judgements of their sex-role behavior, single women are vulnerable to prejudicial evaluations by married people of both sexes. The present study investigated aspects of the social environment which have positive or negative consequences for single women. A survey was conducted of N=48 male and female married subjects in an Australian city. Major findings were that (a) married people have little or no contact with single women; (b) males tend to be more negative in their evaluations of single women than females; and (c) most females can allow for the possibility of a major sex role other than that involving marriage.     

The Effect of Facial Disfigurement on the Proxemic Behavior of the General Public1

The personal space afforded to a disfigured or nondisfigured confederate by 450 pedestrians in a busy street was measured. In Condition 1, the confederate had a birthmark under the right eye (permanent disfigurement). In Condition 2, this was replaced by trauma scarring and bruising (temporary disfigurement). In the third condition, the confederate was “normal” (i.e., no disfigurement). It was found that subjects stood further away from the confederate in the disfigured conditions than in the no disfigurement condition. More specifically, pedestrians arriving first in each trial stood an average distance of 100 cms from the confederate in the birthmark condition, 78 cms in the trauma condition, and 56 cms when the confederate was not disfigured. In addition, subjects chose significantly more often to stand to the left (nondisfigured) side of the confederate in the birthmark and trauma conditions than they did in the normal condition. Those subjects who chose to stand on the right (disfigured) side of the confederate, stood further away from those subjects standing on the nondisfigured side. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of the possible psychological problems associated with facial disfigurement.     

Not all automatic associations are created equal: How implicit normative evaluations are distinct from implicit attitudes and uniquely predict meaningful behavior

We propose a new construct (implicit normative evaluations) that purports to measure automatic associations about societal evaluations. We develop a new measure of this construct based on a modification of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and describe how it is related to but not redundant with implicit attitudes and explicit normative evaluations. Study 1 provided evidence that implicit normative evaluations and implicit attitudes uniquely predicted evaluations measured by the traditional IAT. Study 2 demonstrated that Asian-Canadian immigrants' implicit normative evaluations toward older people became more negative the longer they were in Canada. Study 3 found that engineering students' (both men and women) implicit normative evaluations toward female engineers became more negative as they were exposed to engineering and that for women these negative normative evaluations predicted their intention to drop out of engineering. Study 4 demonstrated that implicit normative evaluations predicted the speed at which participants decide to “shoot” an African Canadian target on a shooter bias task (Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink, 2002). Finally, in Study 5, an experimental manipulation of an audience's reaction to racist jokes targeting people from the Middle East affected implicit normative evaluations about this group and that these implicit normative evaluations in turn affected discrimination. The implications of these results for the importance of social influence and culture in shaping thoughts and behavior are discussed.     

Beyond the double-jeopardy hypothesis: Assessing emotion on the faces of multiply-categorizable targets of prejudice

Prior research has shown that race influences perceptions of facial expressions, with hostility detected earlier on young male Black than White faces. This study examined whether the interplay of race and age would moderate perceptions of hostility by having participants evaluate facial expressions of multiply-categorizable targets. Using a facial emotion change-detection task, we assessed evaluations of onset/offset of anger and happiness on faces of young and old Black and White men. Significant age by race interactions were observed: while participants perceived anger as lasting longer and appearing sooner on old compared to young White faces, this relationship was reversed for Black faces, with participants perceiving anger lasting longer and appearing sooner on young compared to old Black faces. Similar results were found for perceived happiness. These results suggest that perception during cross-categorization may be more complex than the simple additive function proposed by the double-jeopardy hypothesis, such that co-activation of other stereotypes may sometimes confer a protective benefit against bias.     

What are we really priming? Cue-based versus category-based processing of facial stimuli.

Results from 5 experiments provide converging evidence that automatic evaluation of faces in sequential priming paradigms reflects affective responses to phenotypic features per se rather than evaluation of the racial categories to which the faces belong. Experiment 1 demonstrates that African American facial primes with racially prototypic physical features facilitate more automatic negative evaluations than do other Black faces that are unambiguously categorizable as African American but have less prototypic features. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 further support the hypothesis that these differences reflect direct affective responses to physical features rather than differential categorization. Experiment 5 shows that automatic responses to facial primes correlate with cue-based but not category-based explicit measures of prejudice. Overall, these results suggest the existence of 2 distinct types of prejudice.     

Drawn towards what others seem to like: Implicit preference for objects and people looked at with a duchenne smile

People tend to like objects that are looked at by others, especially if the person looking at the object expresses a positive emotion. But not all positive emotions are equal. We investigated the effect of third party gazing while expressing subtle positive emotions on perceivers’ subsequent preferences and evaluations of objects and people. In two studies participants saw faces looking at target objects and people either with a Duchenne, a non-Duchenne smile, or a neural expression. Participants first indicated gaze direction and later reported intuitive target preference and evaluated the targets. Results show a preference for target stimuli that were smiled at with a Duchenne smile as opposed to when they were looked at with a non-Duchenne smile or a neutral expression. More explicit evaluations of the target stimuli were not affected by the type of facial expression.