E-Thesis 116 views 48 downloads
Factors affecting social perceptions of individuals: role of intrasexual competition and face perception / Jeanne Childs
Swansea University Author: Jeanne Childs
DOI (Published version): 10.23889/SUthesis.67496
Abstract
How does an individual’s competitive trait and a target’s facial characteristics affect social perception? This thesis looked at intrasexual competition and perception of social traits separately and contributed to different aspects of evolutionary psychology. Previous studies showed that individual...
| Published: |
Swansea, Wales, UK
2024
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Jones, Alex ; Tree, Jeremy |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa67496 |
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| Abstract: |
How does an individual’s competitive trait and a target’s facial characteristics affect social perception? This thesis looked at intrasexual competition and perception of social traits separately and contributed to different aspects of evolutionary psychology. Previous studies showed that individuals that are more competitive would be more likely to use make-up and cosmetic procedures to alter their appearance, and that milder anti-ageing procedures and self-esteem motivations were more positively evaluated. Using surveys, I explored how women’s skincare behaviours, attitudes towards aesthetic dermatology and personality traits predict females’ competitiveness. I found that knowledge of aesthetic dermatology, motivations of increased self-esteem and one’s anxiety towards appearing older were likely to predict female competitive trait. Additionally, using vignettes of targets with different motivations using different anti-ageing treatments, I found that females that were more competitive were more likely to evaluate targets more negatively, and that self-esteem motivations still received the most positive evaluations. Studies on perception of facial attractiveness have identified gender, emotion, and motion biases. I examined whether these biases also apply to facial health and age using face perception tasks, and found that age estimation was similar across age groups, and facial health showed emotion and motion biases. Lastly, previous studies have demonstrated robust other-ethnicity effects on facial recognition and I determined whether this could also be observed on facial attractiveness, health, and age by employing facial perception studies and eye-tracking techniques. I found no evidence of OEE on perceptions of facial attractiveness, health and age. This thesis advances knowledge in two ways: first, I provided insight on which individuals would be more likely to engage in anti-ageing treatments and how targets would be viewed by observers, and second, I demonstrated that different facial factors influence perception of social traits such as facial attractiveness, health, and age, despite the close relationship between these variables. |
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| Item Description: |
ORCiD identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9086-8898 |
| Keywords: |
face perception, intrasexual competition, other-ethnicity effect |
| College: |
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences |
| Funders: |
CyDen Ltd. |