Face-ism: Five Studies of Sex Differences in Facial Prominence

Dane Archer, Bonita Iritani, Debra D. Kimes, and Michael Barrios

University of California, Santa Cruz

Five studies are presented on relative facial prominence in depictions of men and
women. This hypothesized sex difference may be theoretically important because
visual representations presumably contribute to generic conceptions of what is
unique about each of the two sexes. Three studies describe the prevalence of "face-
ism"—greater facial prominence in depictions of men—in three different contexts:
in American periodicals, in publications from 11 cultures, and in artwork over six
centuries. A fourth study reports experimental evidence that this difference also
occurs in amateur drawings of men and women. A final study varies facial prom-
inence experimentally in photographs and finds consequent changes in rated in-
telligence and other characteristics. The implications for sex differences, and par-
ticularly for the perceived intellectual qualities of women, are discussed.

Research on sex differences is burgeoning.
This literature has developed in two general
areas: (a) actual or purported intellectual and
physiological differences between men and
women (e.g., Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), and
(b) social and psychological differences in the
ways in which men and women are treated
and perceived (e.g., Henley, 1977; Thome &
Henley, 1975; Weitzman, 1979). This article
is in the second of these two traditions and
presents five related studies concerning a con-
sistent and previously uninvestigated differ-
ence between the visual images and represen-
tations of men and women.
Previous research has produced the less than
startling conclusion that the communications
media tend to depict women in "traditional"
roles. Most of these studies have focused on
specific aspects of the media, such as television
scripts (e.g., Miles, 1975; McArthur & Resko,
1975). Studies of media advertising have con-
sistently reported widespread, pervasive sex
This research was supported by Faculty Research Funds
granted by the University of California and by a Guggen-
heim Fellowship to the first author. The authors would
like to thank Ellen Hipschman, Barbara Curbow, Jeanne
Tschann, Robin Akert, and Guntram Wolski for valuable
assistance. The authors would also like to thank Myron
Rothbart and the two anonymous reviewers for their valu-
able suggestions and skilled editorial assistance.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Dane Archer,
Stevenson College, University of California, Santa Cruz,
California 95064.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1983, Vol. 45, No, 4, 725-735
Copyright 1983 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
differences and stereotyping. One of the first
of these, conducted by Courtney and Lockeretz
(1971), analyzed 312 ads from eight general
magazines and found that although 45% of
the men were depicted in paid-work roles, only
9% of the women were portrayed with this
status. Similarly, Sexton and Haberman (1974)
examined 1,827 magazine advertisements and
reported that only 16% of them presented
women in any sort of nontraditional situation.
Finally, Venkatesan and Losco (1975) studied
14,378 magazine ads published between 1959
and 1971. They found that the three roles most
frequently portrayed were (a) woman as sexual
object, (b) woman as physically beautiful, and
(c) woman as dependent on a man.
Although most media research appears to
have focused on advertising, Miller (1975) an-
alyzed 3,661 news photographs published in
The Washington Post and The Los Angeles
Times during 1973 and 1974. This study also
found pronounced sex differences: (a) 81% of
the photographs were exclusively of men; (b)
although 75% of the men were presented in
political, professional, or sports-oriented roles,
women usually appeared when they were so-
cialites, celebrities, or the wives of famous men;
and (c) fully one fourth of all the women pho-
tographed in The Washington Post were brides.
These studies demonstrate that mass-media
depictions of the sexes differ strikingly in con-
tent. Women and men are shown pursuing
different activities and saying different things.

725
726 ARCHER, IRITANI, K1MES, AND BARRIOS

This content-oriented research has been highly Based on casual observations of media pho-
fruitful and has yielded differences that are tographs of men and women, it is our hy-
both dramatic and important. A somewhat pothesis that the essence of a man is thought
different approach to the study of sex differ- to reside in his face and head, whereas that of
ences involves qualitative aspects of the man- a woman is thought to reside more generally
ner or nonverbal style in which women and in her body.
men are presented. The empirical test of this general hypothesis
One of the researchers concerned with these is the degree to which the face dominates the
more qualitative differences has been Erving images of men and women. This article reports
Goffman (1976). Using 508 photographs from five studies on facial prominence. Three of
newspapers and magazines, Goffman identi- these are nonexperimental and descriptive; two
fied a variety of ways in which published pho- are experiments designed to examine the pos-
tographs foster ail image of women as sub- sible consequences of facial prominence.
ordinate and dependent. According to Goff-
man, there are consistent sex differences in General Method: A Face-ism Index
these photographs in terms of posture, gesture, A simple method was designed to measure relative facial
touching, and other nonverbal behaviors. For prominence. This method was designed for use with pho-
example, women tend to be shown in second- tographs, drawings, or other visual images. The method
ary or deferential poses, for example, lying consists of creating an index that is the ratio of two linear
down or standing with a bent or "canted" pos- measurements. The numerator of this index is the distance
(in millimeters or any other unit) in a depiction from the
ture. Men, on the other hand, are often po- top of the head to the lowest point of the chin. The de-
sitioned to be physically elevated above nominator of the index is the distance from the top of the
women. There are also more specific sex dif- head to the lowest visible part of the subject's body.
ferences, for example, men are shown behaving This index of facial prominence is simply the first mea-
aggressively toward women in what Goffman ratio, it candivided
surement by the second. Because the index is a
be applied to photographs, artwork, or images
calls "mock assault." Goffman's interesting of any size. In theory, this index ranges from a low of .00
descriptive work remains relatively unique in (the face is not shown at all) to a high of 1.00 (the picture
the research literature. In general, we know shows only the face and no other part of the body is visible).
more about the content of sex differences in The higher the index, the more the face is used to represent
the media than we do about the stylistic or the person. A low index means the face is minimized; a
high index means the face dominates the image.
qualitative dimensions of these differences. For want of an existing or better term, we have called
This article reports five studies on one pre- this measure the face-ism index. The definition of this
viously unexamined aspect of the stylistic rep- index is straightforward: Face-ism is the relative promi-
resentations of women and men. These studies nence of the face in a photograph, drawing, or other de-
piction of a person. This index appears to be highly reliable,
address the degree to which visual depictions and this is not surprising because physical measurements
of men and women differ in terms of facial are involved. In independent measurements of a pilot
prominence. It is our working hypothesis that sample of 30 photographs, the face-ism index scores of
facial prominence is consistently higher in the two judges were correlated at better than .99. The index
depictions of men than in those of women. If is, therefore, both simple to compute and stable across
coders.
this difference is found, it may have some In any given instance, the application of the face-ism
theoretical significance. Visual representations index may require specific coding rules. In some photo-
like those in the communications media im- graphs, for example, the top or bottom of a person's head
plicitly provide a rendering of the identity, in- may be masked by hats, beards, hairstyles, hands on the
chin, and so forth. In these cases, the location of the head's
dividuality, character, personality, or essence boundaries are estimated by the coder. In addition, use
of the person depicted. of the face-ism index in working with communications
If media depictions of men and women differ media may call for additional coding rules regarding the
in terms of facial prominence, these differences eligibility of certain types of photographs, repeated ap-
may (wittingly or not) communicate something pearances of the same pictures, and so forth. An example
of coding rules for this purpose is described in the first
important about the relative importance for study.
each sex of mind and body. Because the face
and head are the centers of mental life—in- Study 1: American Photographs
tellect, personality, identity, and character—
the relative prominence of this part of the As a descriptive, nonexperimental test of
anatomy may be symbolically consequential. our working hypothesis, the face-ism index was
 SEX DIFFERENCES AND FACIAL PROMINENCE
used to code 1,750 published photographs. The
photographs were selected from at least 12
issues of each of five American periodicals:
Time, Newsweek, Ms., The San Francisco
Chronicle, and a small city newspaper, The
Santa Cruz Sentinel. One fifth (350) of our
1,750 photographs were obtained from each
publication.
The issues were from the same period of
time for all five publications, and the photo-
graphs coded were the first pictures encoun-
tered using a simple set of eligibility rules. The
purpose of these rules was to limit comparisons
to photographs of individuals and to eliminate
photographs biased toward specific regions of
the body. Coding rules were as follows: (a)
photographs may contain only one human
subject, (b) photographs that aim to capture
some particular body region, movement,
problem, or gesture cannot be counted (e.g.,
performing athletes, people modeling clothes
or cosmetics, using tools, in weight loss ads,
etc.), (c) photographs with a "co-subject" can-
not be used (a person next to an elephant, a
driver with a car, etc.), and (d) photographs
printed several times are counted only once
(photographs of regular columnists, entertain-
ment ads, etc,), and (e) photographs of dis-
embodied heads are not counted.
The purpose of these eligibility rules was to
limit the comparison to photographs in which
the visible fraction of the depicted person's
body was entirely arbitrary. In these cases, in
theory, any portion of the person's body could
have been shown. In the five publications ex-
amined, the photographs were of two types:
those in advertisements and those that accom-
panied articles. The face-ism index was com-
puted separately for both types of pictures.
Results
There were more pictures of men than
women. Of the 1,750 eligible photographs,
1,058 (60.5%) were of men. The visual "land-
scape" of these publications is therefore pre-
dominantly male. For four of the five peri-
odicals, more than 70% of the photographs
were of men. The significantly different pe-
riodical, as might be expected, is Ms. Only
14.3% of the pictures in this publication were
of men. In general, eligible photographs were
niore commonly found in articles and stories
than in advertisements: 1,306 (74.6%) of the
727
pictures illustrated text rather than were ad-
vertisements. Sex and photograph type were
related—only 20.1% of the men in photo-
graphs were found in ads, but 33.4% of the
women in photographs were in ads. This dif-
ference was significant (x2 = 38.09, p < .001).
The major finding of Study 1 concerns sex
differences in the face-ism index. In the 1,750
photographs examined, there is a pronounced
tendency to represent men with their faces
and women with their bodies. The mean face-
ism index for the pictures of men (n = 1,058)
was .65, whereas the mean face-ism index for
women (« = 692) was only .45. This difference
was easily significant (t = 18.23, p < .001). In
addition to being statistically significant, this
difference is also very large in absolute terms.
The mean face-ism scores of men and women
differ by almost an entire standard deviation
(d= .91; Cohen, 1977).
These mean values of the face-ism index
are readily interpretable in verbal terms be-
cause the index reflects the proportion of a
picture devoted to the person's face. For
women, the mean face-ism index of .45 in-
dicates that, in general, less than half of each
photograph was devoted to a woman's face.
By contrast, the mean face-ism score of .65
for men indicates that approximately two
thirds of each picture was devoted to the man's
face.
In addition to the main effect for sex, the
design makes it possible to test for the effect
of publication type and of whether the picture
appeared in a story or advertisement. This
design lends itself to a 2 X 5 X 2 (Sex of
Picture X Publication X Story or Ad) analysis
of variance (ANOVA). The mean face-ism scores
of the 1,750 photographs in the 20 cells in
thijs design are shown in Table 1.
This analysis indicates significant main ef-
fects for all three variables at better than the
.001 level: sex of picture, F(\, 1730) = 215.49;
publication, F(4, 1730) = 14.68; story or ad,
F(l, 1730) = 39.96. These differences indicate
that newspapers tend to be high on face-ism
(i.e., show a lot of face) and that pictures ac-
companying stories emphasize faces more than
those accompanying advertising. There were
also two significant interactions: Sex X Pub-
lication, F(4, 1730) = 3.05, p < .02, and Pub-
lication X Story or Ad, F(4, 1730) = 4.96, p <
.001. These interactions indicate that the face-
ism effect is somewhat larger for newspapers
728 ARCHER, IRITANI, KIMES, AND BARRIOS
Table 1
Face-ism Index Scores for Women and Men in Stories and Advertisements in Five Publications
The San Francisco
Photograph Time Newsweek Ms
Stories
Women .39 .52 .42
Men .65 .63 .56
Ads
Women .39 .32 .42
Men .51 .48 .49
Total .56 .57 .44
Note, n = 350 per publication.
than magazines and that this effect varies in
some publications according to whether the
picture appears with a story or advertisement.
The most striking effect in Study 1 is the
strong sex difference. Of the 10 comparisons
in Table 1, all 10 indicate a tendency to rep-
resent men by their faces and women by their
bodies. This is true for ads and stories and for
all five publications, including Ms. magazine.
Because the face^ism "effect" occurs even in
a publiction identified with women's rights, it
suggests that this sexual difference in repre-
sentational styles is widespread, deep-seated,
and perhaps unconscious. The face-ism dif-
ferences shown in Table 1 are particularly in-
teresting because the pictures examined did
not show women modeling swimsuits and
men modeling hats. The coding rules used in
this study limited comparisons to photographs
in which the relative prominence of the face
was entirely arbitrary. In theory, each pho-
tograph could have shown any portion of the
person's body. Even when photographs of this
controlled nature are examined, however, there
are dramatically different representational
styles of men and women.
Study 2: Cross-National Photographs
Because the sex differences identified in
Study 1 might be limited to American media,
a second study was conducted to examine print
media from other cultures. Using the same
eligibility rules used in Study 1, more than
3,500 pictures were coded for face-ism in 13
publications from 11 other nations. The results
of this procedure are indicated in Table 2. For
purposes of comparison, the American data
reported in Study 1 are included in Table 2.
The Santa Cruz
Chronicle Sentinel Total n
.52 .51 .46 461
.69 .70 .66 845
.43 .47 .41 231
.58 .69 .55 213
.63 .65 .57 1750
Results
This analysis yielded several findings. In
general, women were outnumbered by about
four to one in these photographs. The most
important result in Table 2 concerns face-ism.
In every culture examined, the photographs
showed a significant face-ism effect. Even when
the relative prominence of the face is entirely
arbitrary, face-ism affects the images of men
and women in each of these cultures. These
face-ism effects were large in absolute terms
as well as significant (median d = .75; Cohen,
1977). This study indicates that face-ism is
not purely an American invention. When one
examines the images of men and women across
cultures, there is strong evidence that face-ism
plays a consistent role in the depictions of the
sexes.
Study 3: Cross-Era Images
Just as Study 2 presented a cross-national test
of the face-ism hypothesis, Study 3 presents
a "cross era" test for the presence of face-ism
over time. This approach has been recom-
mended as a methodological analogue to cross-
national research (McGuire, 1976) to provide
additional comparative evidence. Like cross-
cultural and cross-national methods, cross-era
research can provide valuable evidence about
the generality or limits of a given finding.
In this study, artwork produced across 6
centuries was examined to provide a cross-era
test of the face-ism hypothesis. Paintings were
examined across this long time span to see
whether face-ism is a purely modern phenom-
enon. The most appropriate paintings for this
analysis are portraits and self-portraits. These
 SEX DIFFERENCES AND FACIAL PROMINENCE 729

works provide the artist (and subject) with an-
atomic freedom because the relative promi-
nence of the face in these works is entirely
arbitrary. The subject of a portrait or self-por-
trait can be shown in full length, as head and
torso only, or as only the face. Unlike paintings
of landscapes, portraits and self-portraits are
intended to capture the identity, character, and
essence of the person portrayed. For this rea-
son, these works constitute an important data
set for the face-ism hypothesis.
A total of 920 portraits and self-portraits
were scored for face-ism. These works of art
were drawn from more than 30 volumes of
reproductions (e.g., Gasser, 1963; Gibson,
1978; Kerslake, 1977). The artworks in this
study were coded for face-ism using the same
general eligibility rules used in the first two
studies. In addition, the following coding re-
strictions were used: (a) only paintings and
drawings were coded, and photographs and
sculpture were not used; (b) works whose titles
specified that specific rooms or spaces are being
depicted were not coded (e.g., "Napoleon in
His Study"); (c) pictures in which the bound-
aries of the head or body cannot be discerned
were not counted (this occurs in some 20th-
century art); and (d) works in which the per-
son's sex is unclear and not clarified in ac-
companying text were not used.
Results
Because the number of reproduced portraits
from the earliest centuries studied was rela-
tively small, the artworks were grouped in the
following four eras: (a) 15th and 16th centuries,
for example, works of Leonardo da Vinci and

Table 2
Face-ism Index Scores for Women and Men in Photographs From Periodicals in 12 Societies
Face-ism score

Nation Women n Men n /

Chile
Ercilla .34 100 .52 100 6.35***
England
Illustrated London News .49 100 .55 100 2.06*
France
Paris Match .33 100 .52 100 5.48***
Le Nouvel Observateur .49 59 .62 291 3.92***
Federal Republic of Germany
Der Spiegel .49 60 .60 290 3.38***
Hong Kong
Far Eastern Economic Review .56 13 .67 337 2.11*
India
Link .45 45 .64 305 6.67***
Italy
L'europeo .33 32 .49 100 3.84***
L'Expresso .49 35 .61 315 2.84**
Kenya
The Weekly Review .47' 25 .72 325 8.93***
Mexico
La Revista Inter-American Vision .49 34 .60 316 3.13**
Middle East •
Middle East Magazine .55 32 .72 318 4.21***
Spain
Gambia 16 .39 98 .58 100 5.36***
U.S.
(see Table 1) .45 692 .65 1058 18.23***
Mdn .49 .60
Note. N = 5,480.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
730 ARCHER, IRITANI, KIMES, AND BARRIOS
Raphael; (b) 17th and 18th centuries, for ex-
ample, Rembrandt and Velazquez; (c) 19th
century, for example, Renoir and Cezanne;
and (d) 20th century^ for example, Modigliani
and Matisse, In each of these four intervals,
230 paintings (115 portraits of women and
115 portraits of men) were scored for face-
ism. These 920 paintings comprised the first
works encountered using the eligibility rules
already indicated. The results of this cross-era
analysis of artwork are shown in Table 3.
These data indicate that face-ism is centuries
old and not merely a modern invention. With
the exception of the very earliest work ex-
amined, each time period in this analysis is
characterized by significant sex differences in
facial prominence. There is also some indi-
cation that this difference has increased rather
than diminished over the past 6 centuries. Sex
differences in face-ism appear to have in-
creased with the passage of each century, con-
cluding with the .50-.34 difference shown for
20th-century artwork. Just as the first two
studies found pervasive sex differences in pub-
lished photographs across a large number of
societies, the study of artwork over time finds
parallel differences across several centuries.
Considered as a whole, these three studies in-
dicate that sex differences in facial prominence
appear to characterize a very wide range of
public images of women and men.
Study 4: Experimental Research
on Drawings
Published photographs and art forms are
important in that they present images to a
large audience. These images constitute a pub-
lic visual definition of the unique qualities and
identity of the person represented—for ex-
ample, "This is the person this story is about"
or "Here is a portrait of what this person is
like." These images are widely distributed, and
if they contain a consistent representational
difference between men and women, this dif-
ference may have important effects.
The three face-ism studies already reported
present nonexperimental evidence concerning
face-ism. These studies indicate that public
depictions of men and women contain con-
sistent, significant differences in terms of facial
prominence. Unlike these three studies, Study
4 presents experimental evidence drawn from
unpublished drawings of men and women.
Table 3
Face-ism Index Scores for Paintings and
Drawings From Four Eras
Mean face-ism
score"
Era Women Men
15th& 16th centuries .39 .41 <(
17th & 18th centuries .30 .38 3.00*
19th century .28 .40 5.35**
20th century .34 .50 5.93**
Note. N = 920.
" The means for each era are based on 230 works of art
(115 portraits of women, 115 portraits of men).
* p < .01. **p <.001.
A small experiment was conducted using
80 university undergraduates (40 women and
40 men). These subjects were randomly as-
signed to one of two conditions. In the first
condition, subjects were given a nearly blank
piece of paper, with only this paragraph of
instructions at the top of it:
We are doing a study on drawing styles. Could you help
us by spending a few minutes to draw a woman? The
drawing can be as simple as you like—we are just interested
in the ways people draw. If you can, please try to capture
the character of a real person in your drawing.
The second condition was identical, except
that subjects were asked to draw a man. An
equal number of men and women were as-
signed to each condition, and this divided the
80 subjects evenly across the four cells of the
resulting 2 X 2 design (Sex of Drawing X Sex
of Subject). The 80 drawings were scored for
face-ism using the same method used to code
photographs in the first three studies.
Results
This experiment provides further evidence
that face-ism may be pervasive. A 2 X 2 ANOVA
on the face-ism index scores of the 80 pho-
tographs produced only one significant effect:
a highly significant main effect for the sex of
the person in the drawing, F(l, 76) = 7.94,
p = .006. The mean face-ism scores of the four
conditions in this experiment on amateur
drawings are shown in Table 4.
As indicated in Table 4, the sex of the artist
was unimportant. Both men and women made
drawings in which the man's face was relatively
prominent and the woman's was not. In ad-
 SEX DIFFERENCES AND FACIAL PROMINENCE
Table 4
Face-ism Index Scores for 80 Drawings
of Men and Women
Subjects
Instruction Women Men Total
Draw a woman .22 .19 .21
Draw a man .39 .36 .37
Note, n = 40 for women; n = 40 for men.
dition to this quantitative face-ism effect, there
also seemed to be a qualitative face-ism effect
in this study. The 80 amateur artists in this
experiment showed a tendency to detail the
men's facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, etc,).
In the drawings made of women, however, the
face was left relatively featureless. Using a
crude "facial detail" scale (one point for each
of the following: eye, eyebrow, nose, mouth,
lips), the faces of male figures were significantly
more detailed, F(l, 73) = 7.82, p < .01.
This study suggests that face-ism may occur
in the private representational systems used
by individuals as well as in the public depic-
tions of the mass media. This experimental
evidence indicates that even when the relative
prominence of the face can take on any value
in a drawing, there is a tendency to emphasize
the importance of the face for men and di-
minish it for women.
Study 5: An Experiment on the
Effects of Face-ism
The four studies already reported indicate
that face-ism appears to be pronounced and
widespread. In this sense, the first four studies
address the prevalence of this previously un-
investigated sex difference. This final study
addresses the possible effects of face-ism. Be-
cause the first four studies indicate that face-
ism exists, it is interesting to ask whether this
sex difference is likely to produce important
differences in attributions, perceptions, and
conceptions of men and women.
An experiment was conducted to provide
some evidence on this question. The basic
method used in this experiment involves a
manipulation of face-ism in a person-percep-
tion task. In this study, the degree of face-ism
in the depiction of a person was varied ex-
731
perimentally to see if changes in facial prom-
inence would affect attributions about the de-
picted person. In the absence of prior research,
it is of course impossible to know what qual-
ities (if any) would be most affected by changes
in relative facial prominence: wit, wisdom,
warmth, and so forth. Because the face and
head are the centers of mental life, however,
it seemed important to include in this study
attributions about perceived intellectual qual-
ities of the person.
In this experiment, 60 university students
were asked to rate stimulus persons in one of
two test booklets. These two test booklets both
contained photographs of the same 12 people
(six women and six men). Each of these 12
people appeared once in each booklet. In one
booklet, the person was shown in a "low" face-
ism condition (with a mean face-ism score of
.15 in the photographs used). In the other
booklet, the same person was shown in a
"high" face-ism condition (with a mean face-
ism score of .60). The high- and low-face-ism
pictures of a person were printed from the
same negative so that the face of the depicted
person in both conditions was identical in every
way except relative prominence.
Each of the two booklets included some low-
face-ism pictures and some high-face-ism pic-
tures. All 12 photographs were taken against
the same background. The 60 raters were as-
signed to one of two test booklets, with equal
numbers of men and women rating each
booklet. Using a 10-point scale, these 60 judges
rated the people in the photographs on their
apparent intelligence, ambition, physical ap-
pearance, and warmth.1 These four qualities
were not chosen systematically, nor as rep-
resentatives of general factors in person per-
ception, but merely as illustrations of the kinds
of attributions that could be investigated using
this experimental procedure.
Results
By means of repeated measures ANOVAS,
the judges' ratings were compared across three
1
The judges indicated their ratings on a 10-point scale,
ranging from "low" to "high." In retrospect, physical at-
tractiveness would have been a better term than the more
ambiguous physical appearance (which would mean at-
tractiveness but also neatness, etc.).
732 ARCHER, IRITANI, KIMES, AND BARRIOS

Table 5
Experimental Data on Ratings of Photographs Varying in Facial Prominence: F Values
from Four Repeated Measures ANOVAS
Variable

Source of variation Intelligence Ambition Physical appearance Warmth

Subject's sex (SUBSEX) 2.32 <, <, 1.82
Facial prominence (PROM) 7.41* 13.21** 16.38** 1.58
Stimulus's sex (STIMSEX) 1.01 <1 11.21** 16.00«*
PROM X STIMSEX 2.41 <1 3.25 <1
PROM X SUBSEX <1 1.49 <1 <1
STIMSEX X SUBSEX <1 <1 1.37 1.23
PROM X STIMSEX X SUBSEX <1 1.33 1.54 <1
Note. N = 60. For each analysis of variance (ANOVA) df = \, 58.
*p< .01. **p < .001.

factors: subject (judge) sex, the relative facial
prominence (high or low) of each photograph,
and sex of stimulus (the sex of the person in
each photograph). The results of this analysis
are shown in Table 5. The most important
finding to emerge from this analysis concerns
facial prominence. For three of the four rating
variables (intelligence, ambition, and physical
appearance), relative facial prominence sig-
nificantly affected the ratings given to each
photograph. In addition, the sex of the person
photographed affected two of the rating vari-
ables (physical appearance and warmth). As
indicated in Table 5, the other main effects
and interactions in the analysis were not sta-
tistically significant.
In addition to being significant, the effect
of facial prominence was also positive. As
shown in Table 6, photographs higher in facial
prominence received more favorable ratings
on intelligence, ambition, and physical ap-
pearance. This finding suggests that perceived
intellectual (and other) qualities may be sig-
nificantly and favorably affected by something
as simple as the relative prominence of the
person's face. This finding is perhaps partic-
ularly striking because each person photo-
graphed in this study served as his or her own
control in an unusually precise manner. The
same person appears in both the high- and
low-facial-prominence conditions, and the very
same negative was used to print both pho-
tographs. The same negative was used to elim-
inate the danger that a person might look quite
different in two consecutive photographs (e.g.,
a flattering vs. unflattering picture).
Finally, it should be mentioned that other
designs could have been used in Study 5, and

Table 6
Mean Ratings on Four Characteristics by Sex and Facial Prominence of Person Photographed
Physical
Intelligence Ambition appearance Warmth

Photograph" M SD M SD M SD M SD
Women
High facial prominence 21.00 3.65 20.45 4.11 17.03 3.69 21.00 3.68
Low facial prominence 19.59 4.61 19.21 3.70 15.00 3.97 21.14 4.58
Men
High facial prominence 20.12 4.16 20.25 3.50 17.64 3.60 19.22 3.42
Low facial prominence 19.71 3.70 18.93 3.50 16.84 4.29 20.11 3.69

Note. N = 60.
* For each rating variable, the mean shown is the sum of three ratings (e.g., each judge rated three women in the high-
facial-prominence condition), and the maximum mean rating is 30 (three ratings of 10 each).
 SEX DIFFERENCES AND FACIAL PROMINENCE
these alternative approaches merit further at-
tention. For example, a much wider range of
rating variables should be employed. Although
this study indicates that experimental manip-
ulation of relative facial prominence does affect
person perception, more multivariate rating
studies are required for a comprehensive un-
derstanding of what specific qualities are most
affected. In addition, further experimental
work could test more refined hypotheses. For
example, it is well established that people tend
to attribute a variety of desirable qualities to
persons seen as physically attractive (e.g., Dion,
Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). Experimental
work on facial prominence could reflect this
fact by including ratings of physical attrac-
tiveness in a covariance analysis to partial out
the effect of this apparently powerful variable.
This could not be done in the current study
because our ratings included the somewhat
different quality of physical appearance rather
than a direct rating of attractiveness.
The first four studies address the existence
and pervasiveness of face-ism, and this final
experiment indicates that face-ism may have
notable consequences. The first four studies
show that facial prominence is highly asym-
metric: Faces tend to be much more prominent
in depictions of men than in those of women.
This final study indicates that this sex-related
asymmetry may affect important qualities of
the ways in which a person is perceived. In
particular, images high in relative facial prom-
inence may produce more favorable attribu-
tions concerning intelligence, ambition, phys-
ical appearance, and other fundamentally im-
portant qualities.
General Discussion
The first three studies in this article address
the nature and prevalence of face-ism—the
relative prominence of the face in depictions
of men and women. These three studies in-
dicate that there is a consistent asymmetry in
the images of the sexes in published photo-
graphs across several cultures and in artwork
across several centuries. The fourth study in-
dicates that this representational difference
may be pervasive in that it also seems to occur
in casual drawings of men and women. Finally,
the fifth study presents some experimental ev-
idence that these sex differences may be con-
733
sequential. When the degree of facial promi-
nence is experimentally manipulated, it seems
to affect attributions about a person's qualities.
The same person is perceived more favorably
when the face is prominent than when it
is not.
Considered together, these five studies in-
dicate that facial prominence may be a variable
of some theoretical interest. The prevalence
of face-ism means that the representational
images of the two sexes are asymmetric. These
studies suggest that essential aspects of personal
identity are thought to be centered in different
anatomic locations in men and women. Men
are represented by their heads and faces;
women are represented using more of their
bodies.
Although this difference seems to be both
clear and pervasive, it should be noted that it
could result either from a tendency to em-
phasize men's faces or from a tendency to em-
phasize women's bodies. The term face-ism is
used in this article but one could argue that
the phenomenon in fact reflects "body-ism,"
a tendency to include the body in represen-
tations of women. A longer and somewhat
more neutral term, relativefacial prominence,
also could have been used in place of face-
ism. What seems clear, however, is that ana-
tomic differences do occur in the represen-
tations of men and women and that the net
result involves greater facial prominence for
men than for women.
Anatomic differences in sex images may
have important effects. If the unique qualities
of men are associated with the face, these
qualities are likely to be conceptualized in
terms of intellect, personality, character, wit,
and other dimensions of mental life. If the
unique qualities of women are associated less
with the head and more with the body, these
qualities are likely to be conceptualized in
nonintellectual terms like weight, physique,
attractiveness, or emotion. Facial prominence
may both reflect and contribute to thematic
conceptions about the relative importance for
women and men of hearts and minds. The
existence of these differential visual images in
the communications media may prove to be
particularly influential because there is some
evidence for "nonverbal primacy"—that is,
that nonverbal channels of information play
a central role in person perception and
734 ARCHER, IRITANI, KIMES, AND BARRIOS
impression formation (Archer & Akert, 1977;
Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Archer,
1979).
Relative facial prominence appears to be a
pervasive and theoretically interesting instance
of sex differences. Based on the five studies
reported in this article, the phenomenon war-
rants further attention, and a number of av-
enues for new work seem indicated. For ex-
ample, one could focus on the process by
which individuals "frame" depictions of men
and women. One might investigate this process
by asking subjects in field settings to approach
a man (or a woman) from a distance and take
a photograph that captures the "essence" of
the person. The subject in such a study would
determine the distance between the camera
and the person photographed, and the re-
searcher could then examine the relative facial
prominence in the resulting pictures.
Other areas of new work might include de-
velopmental studies of children's drawings to
see when differences in the depiction of men
and women first appear. One might search for
sex differences in facial prominence in natu-
ralistic instances of "visual presentations of
the self"—for example, photographs of au-
thors on book jackets. One could also vary
relative facial prominence in a series of stim-
ulus photographs and ask subjects to write
imaginative stories about the depicted indi-
viduals. These stories could be coded for the-
matic content like achievement, corporal and
cerebral traits, and the presence of favorable
and unfavorable story outcomes. These studies
and other research could increase our under-
standing of the extent and effects of this rep-
resentational difference between men and
women.
Although the studies reported here indicate
that face-ism exists across societies and over
time, the roots of this phenomenon remain
unexplained. This asymmetry in facial prom-
inence may lie deep in historic conceptions
about essential differences between the sexes.
The defining, identifying, and pivotal qualities
associated with men may center on key di-
mensions of mental life. The qualities uniquely
associated with women, however, may be more
corporal than cerebral. The unique, defining
features of women may be thought to lie in
physical attractiveness, emotions located in the
metaphorical heart, and body shape and size.
If the uniqueness of men and women is con-
ceived of in these different ways, men would
seem to have an advantage in that their identity
rests in mental qualities that are more durable
than ephemeral somatic features like physique
and physical attractiveness.
Apart from these unresolved questions
about its origins, face-ism may be of continuing
importance if it contributes to and perpetuates
stereotyped conceptions of what is important
about men and women. In particular, because
this difference in facial prominence appears
to slight the intellectual qualities of women,
its persistence and effects may be both note-
worthy and problematic. These differences also
may be of some practical concern in the com-
munications media, in which the represen-
tations of men and women seem certain to
contribute to generic images about sex differ-
ences. Although previously unrecognized and
unexamined, differential facial prominence
seems to constitute a major difference in the
way these images of men and women are con-
structed.
References
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Received August 5, 1982
Revision received February 1, 1983 •

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