Man, You Might Look Like a Woman-If a Child Is Next to You

Varying sex and identity of faces affects face categorization differently in humans and computational models

Our faces display socially important sex and identity information. How perceptually independent are these facial characteristics? Here, we used a sex categorization task to investigate how changing faces in terms of either their sex or identity affects sex categorization of those faces, whether these manipulations affect sex categorization similarly when the original faces were personally familiar or unknown, and, whether computational models trained for sex classification respond similarly to human observers. Our results show that varying faces along either sex or identity dimension affects their sex categorization. When the sex was swapped (e.g., female faces became male looking, Experiment 1), sex categorization performance was different from that with the original unchanged faces, and significantly more so for people who were familiar with the original faces than those who were not. When the identity of the faces was manipulated by caricaturing or anti-caricaturing them (these manipulations either augment or diminish idiosyncratic facial information, Experiment 2), sex categorization performance to caricatured, original, and anti-caricatured faces increased in that order, independently of face familiarity. Moreover, our face manipulations showed different effects upon computational models trained for sex classification and elicited different patterns of responses in humans and computational models. These results not only support the notion that the sex and identity of faces are processed integratively by human observers but also demonstrate that computational models of face categorization may not capture key characteristics of human face categorization.

Red biases sex categorization of human bodies

Color is associated with gender information (e.g., red-female). However, little has been known on the effect of color on sex recognition of human bodies. This study aimed to investigate whether the color red could influence the categorization of human bodies by sex, and the effect of contextual information. Visual stimuli were created using body silhouettes varying along the waist-to-hip ratio from female to male shapes. These stimuli were presented in conjunction with red, green, and gray colors, which were used either as body color (Experiment 1) or background color (Experiment 2). Participants were instructed to categorize the sex of the body stimuli as either male or female by pressing labeled keys. The results showed that when red was used as a body color, it induced a bias toward feminine body perception, while when used as a background color, it induced a bias toward masculine body perception. Thus, the color red influenced the sex categorization of human bodies, which being modulated by contextual information. These findings provided novel insights into the effect of contextual color cues in sex recognition of human bodies.

If there's a penis, it's most likely a man: Investigating the social construction of gender using eye tracking

In their foundational work on the social construction of gender, Kessler and McKenna (1978) investigated the relationship between gender attribution and genital attribution. We used digital reproductions of the original stimuli to replicate their findings in the current social context. To further investigate the underlying decision processes we applied eye tracking. The stimuli shown varied in the composition of gender cues: from those more commonly associated with maleness to associated with femaleness. Applying the ethnomethodological approach originally used, participants were asked to decide for each stimulus whether they saw a man or a woman and to indicate subjective confidence with the decision. In line with the original results we found that the genital attribution contributed immensely to the gender attribution. Also, male gender was ascribed more often when the penis was present than was female gender when the vulva was shown. Eye tracking revealed that overall most dwell time as a proxy for important information was dedicated to the head, chest and genital areas of all the stimuli. Total dwell time depended on whether the gender attribution was made in line with the depicted genital, if the genital was a penis. Attributing female gender when a penis was present was associated with longer total dwell time, unlike attributing male gender with a vulva shown. This is indicative of higher cognitive effort and more difficulty ignoring the penis as opposed to the vulva. We interpret this finding in context of the persistent male dominance as well as to the socio-cultural understanding of the vulva as a concealed and therefore seemingly absent organ. In summary, we were able to show that the gender attribution is still closely linked to genital attribution when having a binary forced choice task and that the penis is a special cue in this attribution process.