Judging People at a Glance

Source: Dall-E / Open AI

Co-authored by Marioloa Paruzel-Czachura, PhD

Appearance and stereotypes

Imagine strolling down a quiet side street in an unfamiliar city. A stranger walks rapidly toward you. You have no idea who they are nor their reason for approaching. You know nothing about their intentions. We often judge people quickly, especially in such instances. We do so based on appearance: what they look like and how they move. We might, without realizing it, form instant opinions about their character, such as if they can be trusted or if they are dangerous. In this scenario and many others, we implicitly create “stories” about people when we have very little information; these stories contribute to the formation of stereotypes.

This storytelling process is called “face-reading.” We read other people’s faces to infer psychological traits. A common form of face reading is assuming that attractive people are also good people. This conflation of aesthetic and moral values, a “beauty-is-good” stereotype, influences behavior, like pursuing partners, hiring people, giving students grades, and choosing who to sit next to on a bus. More troubling, we tend to give attractive criminals lesser punishments.

Anomalies-are-bad stereotype

People with facial anomalies, such as palsies and scars, often experience prejudice. To others, their anomalies are taken (without evidence) to signal negative personality traits. In several studies, we have described this phenomenon, known as the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype (Hartung et al., 2019; Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2021). These stereotypes are reinforced by popular culture such as movies in the Marvel Universe, in Bond movies, and even in movies for children like The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.

We recently published a paper in which we sought to better understand the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype (Paruzel-Czachura et al., 2024) by deconstructing what “bad” means. To do so, we used the stereotype content model (SCM) and also queried forms of dehumanization. According to the SCM, we quickly judge if a person is warm and competent. The motivation for this judgment, as exemplified in the opening example of encountering a stranger in an unfamiliar city, is to determine if a person is friend or foe (warmth), and whether they are effective (competence). We also wished to understand if people dehumanize people with facial anomalies. Dehumanization entails regarding others as more like animals or as machines, rather than as being fully human.

Deconstructing bad

We asked nearly 1,500 people to assess various traits (like honesty and intelligence) of strangers based only on a photograph. We used photos of people before and after surgical correction of facial anomalies, either scars or palsies, to compare assumptions. Why might the reaction to scars differ from those to palsies? Scars are imposed from without—they are the result of an external injury. Palsies are caused from within—whether because of Bell’s palsy or stroke, the source of the anomaly is an internal injury. Palsies may evoke negative stereotypes more than scars if viewers more directly relate internal sources of injury with internal traits of a person.

We found that faces with both palsies and scars were perceived as less warm (e.g., less moral) and less competent (e.g., less intelligent). Viewers also dehumanized these faces with anomalies more than those same faces without scars or palsies. They were judged to be more like animals and machines than like humans. Responses did not differ between scars and palsies. However, if anomalous faces were also seen as more attractive, this perception somewhat mitigated the strength of the negative bias. Both stereotypes, “anomalies-are-bad” and “beauty-is-good,” operated simultaneously in opposite directions.

The misreading of faces is a disheartening aspect of human nature. The judgments occur quickly before reason enters our thinking and bias our behavior. Can we counteract this reflexive response? If culture contributes to these stereotypes, perhaps culture can dismantle them. Interventions that pair anomalous faces with positive traits might help reduce biases. Activist groups like Facial Equality International and Changing Faces are raising awareness about these stereotypes. One step we can take is to stop reinforcing the idea that pretty princesses are good, ugly witches are bad, and scarred lions are villains. Fairy tales can be re-told. Stories can be rewritten.