A Cross-Cultural Study of the Attribution of Personological Characteristics As a Function of Facial Perception
The extensive literature on faces alone attests to their importance. However, it is somewhat surprising that very little research has been concerned with the major objectives of this investigation. In particlular, identifying the salient personological characteristics attributed to faces, and examinign, systematically, individual differences in the perception and attribution of important personality characteristics. Not only are personality traits readily attributed to various sorts of faces, but such judgments have shown a high degree of agreement (Secord, 1958; Brunswik, 1956). Judgments of intelligence from photographs (Brunswik, 1956) reveal high inter-rater reliability, as do &dquo;cuteness&dquo; judgments (Brooks & Hochberg, 1960) of schematized baby’s faces. The major individual difference variables that have emerged in the person perception literature have been race, sex and the amount of prejudice of the judge. A study by Parrott & Saiia (1972) in which both males and females (half black, half white) were asked to rate opposite sex black and white photos on selected semantic differential-type scales concerned itself with heterosexual perception. A sex by race interaction was obtained for such scales