2017/09/11 by Jason C. Deska, Kurt Hugenberg · 22 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Cognitive psychology #Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior #Face (sociological concept) #Face Recognition and Perception #Face perception #Pain perception #Perception #Physical therapy #Psychology #Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment #Social perception #Social psychology
paper · doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2017.08.004
published in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 74, 56-64 (Elsevier BV)
openalex publication_date 2017/09/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The accurate perception of others’ pain is important for both perceivers and targets. Yet, like other person perception judgments, pain judgments are prone to biases. Although past work has begun detailing characteristics of targets that can bias pain judgments (e.g., race, gender), the current work examines a novel source of bias inherent to all targets: structural characteristics of the human face. Specifically, we present four studies demonstrating that facial width-to-height ratio, a stable feature of all faces, biases pain judgments. Compared to those with low facial width-to-height ratio, individuals with high facial width-to-height ratio are perceived as experiencing less pain in otherwise identical situations (Studies 1, 2, & 3), and as needing less pain medication to salve their injuries (Study 4). This process was observed for White but not Black targets (Study 2), and manipulations of facial width-to-height ratio affected pain perceptions even when target identity was held constant (Study 4). Together, these findings implicate face structure in judgments of others’ pain.