In masks we trust: explicit and implicit reactions to masked faces vary by political orientation

Previous studies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic indicated that wearing a medical-style mask affects whether a stranger's face is judged as more trustworthy, socially desirable, or likely to be ill. However, given political controversies around mask use, these effects might vary by political orientation. In a pre-registered online experiment, we measured evaluations of trustworthiness, social desirability and perceived illness in masked and unmasked faces by 1241 British and US participants. We included questions on political orientation, along with the implicit online-VAAST approach/avoid task to test reaction times to masked/unmasked faces. There was a medium-sized effect of masks on trustworthiness and a significant interaction with political orientation, in that conservatives found masked faces less trustworthy than did liberals. Participants were quicker to approach masked than unmasked faces, but conservatives were relatively slower than liberals. The effects on trustworthiness suggest that differential moralization of novel social norms can affect how their adherents are evaluated in terms of their suitability for social interactions. Furthermore, the congruence between implicit and explicit methods implies that such differences can have deep-seated effects on reactions.

First impressions of a new face are shaped by infection concerns

Along with a classical immune system, we have evolved a behavioral one that directs us away from potentially contagious individuals. Here I show, using publicly available cross-cultural data, that this adaptation is so fundamental that our first impressions of a male stranger are largely driven by the perceived health of his face. Positive (likeable, capable, intelligent, trustworthy) and negative (unfriendly, ignorant, lazy) first impressions are affected by facial health in adaptively different ways, inconsistent with a mere halo effect; they are also modulated by one's current state of health and inclination to feel disgusted by pathogens. These findings, which replicated across two countries as different as the USA and India, suggest that instinctive perceptions of badness and goodness from faces are not two sides of the same coin but reflect the (nonsymmetrical) expected costs and benefits of interaction. Apparently, pathogens run the show-and first impressions come second. Lay Summary: Our first impressions of strangers (whether they seem trustworthy, intelligent, unfriendly, or aggressive) are shaped by how healthy their faces look and by our unconscious motivation to avoid infections. Bad and good impressions turn out to reflect the concrete, potentially vital, expected costs and benefits of interacting with our fellow humans. Apparently, pathogens run the show-and first impressions come second.

Defensive emotions and evaluative judgements: Sensitivity to anger and fear predicts moral judgements, whereas sensitivity to disgust predicts aesthetic judgements

Aesthetic and moral evaluations engage appetitive and defensive emotions. While the role played by pleasure in positive aesthetic and moral judgements has been extensively researched, little is known about how defensive emotions influence negative aesthetic and moral judgements. Specifically, it is unknown which defensive emotions such judgements tap into, and whether both kinds of judgement share a common emotional root. Here, we investigated how participants' individual sensitivity to disgust, fear, anger and sadness predicted subjective judgements of aesthetic and moral stimuli. Bayesian modelling revealed that participants who were more sensitive to anger and fear found conventional and moral transgressions more wrong. In contrast, participants who were more sensitive to disgust disliked asymmetrical geometric patterns and untidy rooms more. These findings suggest that aesthetic and moral evaluations engage multiple defensive emotions, not just disgust, and that they may rely on different defensive emotions as part of their computational mechanism.

Physical Attractiveness Biases Judgments Pertaining to the Moral Domain of Purity

Research on the Beauty-is-Good stereotype shows that unattractive people are perceived to have worse moral character than attractive individuals. Yet research has not explored what kinds of moral character judgments are particularly biased by attractiveness. In this work, we tested whether attractiveness particularly biases moral character judgments pertaining to the moral domain of purity, beyond a more general halo effect. Across four preregistered studies (N = 1,778), we found that unattractive (vs. attractive) individuals were judged to be more likely to engage in purity violations compared with harm violations and that this was not due to differences in perceived moral wrongness, weirdness, or sociality between purity and harm violations. The findings shed light on how physical attractiveness influences moral character attributions, suggesting that physical attractiveness particularly biases character judgments pertaining to the moral domain of purity.

Evidence against the "anomalous-is-bad" stereotype in Hadza hunter gatherers

People have an "anomalous-is-bad" stereotype whereby they make negative inferences about the moral character of people with craniofacial anomalies like scars. This stereotype is hypothesized to be a byproduct of adaptations for avoiding pathogens. However, evidence for the anomalous-is-bad stereotype comes from studies of European and North American populations; the byproduct hypothesis would predict universality of the stereotype. We presented 123 Hadza across ten camps pairs of morphed Hadza faces-each with one face altered to include a scar-and asked who they expected to be more moral and a better forager. Hadza with minimal exposure to other cultures chose at chance for both questions. Hadza with greater exposure to other cultures, however, expected the scarred face to be less moral and a better forager. These results suggest the anomalous-is-bad stereotype may be culturally shared or learned erroneously through associations with population-level differences, providing evidence against a universal pathogen avoidance byproduct hypothesis.

Beyond the beauty of occlusion: medical masks increase facial attractiveness more than other face coverings

The sanitary-mask effect (Miyazaki and Kawahara in Jpn Psychol Res 58(3):261–272, 2016) is the finding that medical face masks prompt an image of disease and thus result in lower ratings of facial attractiveness of the wearer. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, medical masks have been found to increase attractiveness (Patel et al. in Plast Reconstruct Surg Glob Open 8(8), 2020) although this could have been a general effect of occlusion. To further explore this issue, female participants were presented with a series of male faces of low or high attractiveness that were occluded with a medical mask, cloth mask, book or not occluded and asked to rate them on attractiveness. The results show that faces were considered as most attractive when covered by medical masks and significantly more attractive when occluded with cloth masks than when not occluded. Contrary to expectation, base attractiveness did not interact with the type of occlusion, suggesting that this is not simply due to occlusion of negative features. The present findings are contrary to the sanitary-mask effect and explanations in terms of social desirability, and the association of medical masks with caregiving professions is explored.

Beyond Aesthetic Judgment: Beauty Increases Moral Standing Through Perceptions of Purity

Researchers have tended to focus on mind perception as integral to judgments of moral standing, yet a smaller body of evidence suggests that beauty may also be an important factor (for some people and animals). Across six studies (N = 1,662), we investigated whether beauty increases moral standing attributions to a wide range of targets, including non-sentient entities, and explored the psychological mechanism through which beauty assigns moral standing to targets. We found that people attribute greater moral standing to beautiful (vs. ugly) animals (Study 1 and Study 5a, preregistered) and humans (Study 2). This effect also extended to non-sentient targets, that is, people perceive beautiful (vs. ugly) landscapes (Study 3) and buildings (Study 4 and Study 5b, preregistered) as possessing greater moral standing. Across all studies, perceptions of purity mediated the effect of beauty on moral standing, suggesting that beauty increases the moral standing individuals place on targets through evoking moral intuitions of purity.