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Manuel Yellen Professor of Social Relations Professor of Psychology Ph.D., Yale University Office: Brown 116 Phone: 781-736-3263 email: zebrowitz@brandeis.edu Learn more about her book, Reading Faces. |
My Research
Despite the injunction 'Don't judge a book by its cover', considerable research demonstrates consensual first impressions of others' psychological traits based on facial appearance. Ongoing research in my laboratory addresses three questions concerning this phenomenon: 1) what are the facial qualities that influence trait impressions? 2) why do perceivers respond as they do to these particular facial qualities? 3) what are the social and psychological consequences of judging others by their appearance? This work has been guided by a model of appearance-trait relationships that specifies four possible developmental paths to actual relationships between facial appearance and psychological traits as well as a set of overgeneralization hypotheses, each of which specifies an adaptive basis for forming particular impressions of faces based on their resemblance to faces for which those impressions are accurate (Zebrowitz, 1997; Zebrowitz & Collins, 1997).
The four possible developmental paths to actual relationships between facial appearance and psychological traits include biological causes of both, environmental causes of both, traits causing appearance, and appearance causing traits via its impact on the social environment. Insofar as appearance and traits are related due to the impact of appearance on the social environment, there is a need to explain the origin and nature of such an impact. One possible mechanism is provided by the overgeneralization hypotheses, which specify particular configurations of physical qualities that will give rise to behavioral expectations and that can create true relationships between appearance and traits via self-fulfilling (or self-defeating) prophecy effects. According to the overgeneralization hypotheses, the evolutionary and social importance of detecting attributes like emotion, age, identity, or genetic fitness has created a strong tendency to respond to the facial qualities that reveal these attributes that is overgeneralized to people whose faces merely resemble a particular emotion, age, identity, or level of fitness. We are currently using connectionist modeling and fMRI methods to test the overgeneralization hypotheses, which have relevance for age, sex, and race stereotypes (Zebrowitz, Fellous, Mignault, Andreoletti, 2003).
Much of the research in my laboratory has focused on the 'babyface overgeneralization effect'. This work has established that people of all ages whose facial qualities resemble those of infants (e.g., large eyes, round faces, small chins) are perceived to have childlike traits and are treated differently from the maturefaced in real-world venues, such as employment and the justice system. Research testing the model of appearance-trait relations has provided evidence to indicate that babyfaceness produces a self-defeating prophecy effect. In particular, babyfaced people often have traits opposite to those that perceivers expect, including assertiveness, hostility, and physical bravery (Collins & Zebrowitz, 1995; Zebrowitz, Collins, & Dutta, 1998; Zebrowitz, Andreoletti, Collins, Lee, & Blumenthal, 1998). The strength of first impressions of babyfaced individuals despite contradictory evidence underscores the powerful tendency for people to overgeneralize their appropriate responses to babies. Other research testing the model has provided evidence that all four paths contribute to correlations between attractiveness and intelligence (Zebrowitz, Hall, Murphy, & Rhodes, 2002). However, research has also revealed that correlations of attractiveness with perceived intelligence and health are consistent with biological contributions to each only in the lower half of the attractiveness distribution. The additional explanatory principle of an anomalous (unfit) face overgeneralization effect is required to explain more negative impressions of faces in the middle of the attractiveness continuum as compared with those at the high end. (Zebrowitz & Rhodes, 2004).
Learn more about her book, Reading Faces.
Selected Publications
Zebrowitz, L.A. & Montepare, J.M. (2005). Appearence DOES Matter. Science, Vol 308, Issue 5728, 1565-1566. Summary - Full Text
Zebrowitz, L.A. & Rhodes, G. (2004). Sensitivity to ‘bad genes’ and the anomalous face overgeneralization effect: Accuracy, cue validity, and cue utilization in judging intelligence and health. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. 28, 167-185 .
Zebrowitz, L.A. (2004). The origins of first impressions. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 2, 93-108.
Zebrowitz, L.A., Fellous, J.M., Mignault, A. & Andreoletti, C. (2003). Trait Impressions as Overgeneralized Responses to Adaptively Significant Facial Qualities: Evidence from Connectionist Modeling. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 194-215.
Zebrowitz, L.A., Hall, J.A., Murphy, N.A., & Rhodes, G. (2002) Looking smart and looking good: Facial cues to intelligence and their origins. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 238-249
Montepare, J.M. & Zebrowitz, L.A. (2002). A social-developmental view of ageism. In T. Nelson(Eds.) Ageism: Stereotyping and Prejudice Against Older Persons. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Zebrowitz, L.A. & Rhodes, G. (2002). Nature let a hundred flowers bloom: The multiple ways and wherefores of attractiveness. In G. Rhodes & L.A. Zebrowitz (Eds.). Facial attractiveness: Evolutionary, cognitive, and social perspectives. Greenwood Publishers.
Andreoletti, C., Zebrowitz, L.A., & Lachman, M.E. (2001). Physical appearance and control beliefs in young, middle-aged, and older adults. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 969-981.
Zebrowitz, L.A., & Montepare, J.M. (2000). Too young, too old: Stigmatizing adolescents and the elderly. (pp. 334-373) In T. Heatherton, R. Kleck, J.G. Hull, & M. Hebl (Eds.) Stigma. NY: Guilford Publications.
Montepare, J.M. & Zebrowitz, L.A. (1998). Person perception comes of age: the salience and significance of age in social judgments. Dr. M. P. Zanna (Ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol 30. San Deigo, CA: Academic Press.
Zebrowitz, L.A., Andreoletti, C., Collins, M.A., Lee, S.Y., & Blumenthal, J. (1998). Bright, bad, babyfaced boys: Appearance stereotypes do not always yield self-fulfilling prophecy effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 1300-1320.
Kalick, S.M., Zebrowitz, L.A., Langlois, J.H., & Johnson, R.M. (1997). Does human facial attractiveness honestly advertise health? Longitudinal data on an evolutionary question. Psychological Science, 9, 8-13 C:\Documents and Settings\coletti\Desktop\THE ONE\The One\images\pdf.
Zebrowitz, L.A., & Collins, M.A. (1997). Accurate social perception at zero acquaintance: The affordances of a Gibsonian approach. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 203-222.
Zebrowitz, L.A. (1997). Reading Faces: Window to the Soul? Boulder, CO: Westview Press. [translated into Japanese and published by Taishukan Publishing Co. Ltd., 1999.]
Zebrowitz, L.A., & McDonald, S. (1991). The impact of litigants' babyfacedness and attractiveness on adjudications in small claims courts. Law and Human Behavior, 15, 603-623.