What's in a face? the role of skin tone, facial physiognomy, and color presentation mode of facial primes in affective priming effects

  • Elena V. Stepanova
  • , Michael J. Strube

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

Participants (N=106) performed an affective priming task with facial primes that varied in their skin tone and facial physiognomy, and, which were presented either in color or in gray-scale. Participants' racial evaluations were more positive for Eurocentric than for Afrocentric physiognomy faces. Light skin tone faces were evaluated more positively than dark skin tone faces, but the magnitude of this effect depended on the mode of color presentation. The results suggest that in affective priming tasks, faces might not be processed holistically, and instead, visual features of facial priming stimuli independently affect implicit evaluations.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)212-227
Number of pages16
JournalJournal of Social Psychology
Volume152
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2012

Keywords

  • affective priming task
  • facial physiognomy
  • feature-based processing
  • gray scale
  • skin tone

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