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HOW TO DESCRIBE APPEAREANCE IN ENGLISH
UzSWLU, 1
st
year student
Qudratova Zilolaxon
Group:2234
Scientific adviser: Bobodjonov X.
Abstract
We form first impressions from faces despite warnings not to do so. Moreover, there
is considerable agreement in our impressions, which carry significant social outcomes.
Appearance matters because some facial qualities are so useful in guiding adaptive
behavior that even a trace of those qualities can create an impression.
Specifically, the qualities revealed by facial cues that characterize low fitness, babies,
emotion, and identity are over generalized to people whose facial appearance resembles
the unfit (anomalous face overgeneralization), babies (baby face overgeneralization), a
particular emotion (emotion face overgeneralization), or a particular identity (familiar
face overgeneralization). We review studies that support the overgeneralization
hypotheses and recommend research that incorporates additional tenets of the ecological
theory from which these hypotheses are derived: the contribution of dynamic and multi-
modal stimulus information to face perception; bidirectional relationships between
behavior and face perception; perceptual learning mechanisms and social goals that
sensitize perceivers to particular information in faces.
Keywords:
Face Perception, Impression Formation, Appearance, Attractiveness,
Babyface, Emotion, Familiarity, Fitness
Although we are admonished “don’t judge a book by its cover”, we repeatedly defy
that warning as we go about our daily lives responding to people on the basis of their
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facial appearance. The impact of faces is shown in our impressions of people as well as
in our behavior towards them, such as whom we help, whom we hire, or whom we ask
for a date.
Appearance matters not only when our reactions to a face are arguably relevant to our
choices, but even when those choices should be driven by more objective information.
For example, facial appearance predicts criminal justice decisions, as well as
congressional elections.
Why does facial appearance matter? Why do particular faces create certain
impressions? What cues drive our impressions of these faces?
Here we describe how hypotheses derived from an ecological approach to social
perception provide insights into social psychological face perception and the role of
facial appearance in impression formation.
The conceptual framework
The ecological approach to social perception, grounded in Gibson’s theory of object
perception, holds that people’s faces provide adaptive information about the social
interactions they afford. For example, the ‘cute’ face of a baby elicits approach and
protective responses an angry face potentiates avoidance and defensive responses.
Although ecological theory assumes that our perceptions of faces will often be
accurate, it also proposes that attunements to certain facial information can produce
biased perceptions through
overgeneralization effects
.
Specifically, the qualities that are accurately revealed by the facial cues that
characterize low fitness, babies, emotion, and identity tend to be perceived in people
whose facial appearance resembles the unfit, babies, a particular emotion, or a
particular identity. Thus, according to the ecological approach, facial appearance
matters because some facial qualities are so useful in guiding adaptive behavior that
even a trace of those qualities can elicit a response. The errors produced by these
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overgeneralizations are presumed to be less maladaptive than those that might result
from failing to respond appropriately to persons who vary in fitness, age, emotion, or
familiarity.
Moreover, generalizing across faces is just one instance of the broader cognitive
mechanism of stimulus generalization that is essential for adaptive behavior. The
world would be quite overwhelming if we had no expectations about our social and
non-social environment because we failed to generalize from known cases to similar
unknown ones.
The focus of ecological theory differs markedly from traditional impression
formation research that, until quite recently, has largely eschewed effects of external
appearance, focusing primarily on internal mechanisms.
On the other hand, ecological theory intersects with evolutionary psychology
theories , and it has much in common with a long line of research on nonverbal
communication that is also concerned with reactions to facial cues. It also
complements contemporary models of face perception in the cognitive neuroscience
literature. One is the dual process model that differentiates mechanisms for the
perception of identity versus the perception of emotion and other changeable facial
qualities. Another is a model that predicts face recognition from the position of faces
in a mental face-space where faces are coded relative to an average face with distances
between faces representing similarities in their appearance. Ecological theory adds to
these models by emphasizing that face perception guides behavior, expanding the
domain of face perception to include perceived traits and social interaction
opportunities, and predicting these perceptions from the overgeneralization of
adaptive responses.
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Хакимбаева,
О.
К.
"ОБРАЗ
ЖЕНЩИНЫ
И
МУЖЧИНЫ
ВО
ФРАЗЕОЛОГИЗМАХ
РУССКОГО
И
АНГЛИЙСКОГО
ЯЗЫКОВ." Multidiscipline Proceedings of Digital Fashion Conference. Vol. 2. No.
1. 2022.
