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The creepy, the bad and the ugly: exploring perceptions of moral character and social desirability in uncanny faces

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Abstract

We used implicit and explicit measures to study whether “real” uncanny faces (by faces of Botox users and very ugly people) will be associated with perceptions of bad moral character and social avoidance. Implicit measures showed that uncanny faces were more strongly associated with negative aesthetic evaluations (“ugliness”) than with negative moral evaluation (“moral disgust”). At the explicit level, participants preferred greater social distance from uncanny faces than from neutral faces and inferred that they shared fewer moral values with uncanny faces than with neutral faces. Contrary to our hypotheses, only Ugly faces (but not Botox faces) were perceived as more likely to commit behaviors that indicate bad moral character. However, when this analysis was restricted to “sick” immoral actions, Botox faces were perceived as more likely to be engage in these kind of behaviors than neutral faces. Although exploratory in nature, this investigation suggest that ugliness (more than creepiness) may be the crucial evaluative dimension underlying rapid moral inferences from faces.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

  1. In the words of Blanton and colleagues (2014, p.3): “Although no explicit rationale was ever published, cut-values centered around the D values of 0.15 (“slight preference”), 0.35 (“moderate preference”), and 0.64 (“strong preference”) were adopted. These same cut-points are used in the other IAT measures used to assess psychological states (Anthony Greenwald, personal communication, August 2002).”

  2. In particular, only Face #2 (Ugly category) showed middle values in the creepiness dimension (Appendix A).

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Acknowledgments

We thank Evelyn Gil, Diana Estrada, Laura Quinchía and Joan Urriago for help with the experimental procedure.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology and Social Sciences, Universidad Católica Luis Amigó, Transversal 514A #67B 90, Medellín, Colombia

    Antonio Olivera-La Rosa

  2. Human Evolution and Cognition Group, associated group to IFISC, University of the Balearic Islands – CSIC, Carr. de Valldemossa, km 7,5, 07122, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

    Antonio Olivera-La Rosa & Javier Villacampa

  3. Departament of Psychology, Universidad Camilo José Cela, Urb. Villafranca del Castillo, Calle Castillo de Alarcón, 49, 28692, Madrid, Villanueva de la Cañada, Spain

    Guido Corradi

  4. Department of Psychology, Universidad de Los Andes, Cra. 1 #18a-12, Bogotá, Colombia

    Gordon P. D. Ingram

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  1. Antonio Olivera-La Rosa
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  2. Javier Villacampa
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Correspondence to Antonio Olivera-La Rosa.

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Appendices

Target items (Botox faces, Ugly faces and Neutral faces)

Participants rated all faces by using two 7-point Likert scales: the aesthetic scale (from 1: “very ugly” to 7: “very handsome”) and the creepiness scale (from 1: “very creepy” to 7: “not creepy at all”).

BOTOX FACES

Botox Face 1: 2.75 (Ugliness); 2.82 (Creepiness).

Botox face 2: 2.8 (Ugliness); 2.87 (Creepiness).

Botox face 3: 2.36 (Ugliness); 2.53 (Creepiness).

UGLY FACES

Ugly face 1: 1.73 (Ugliness); 2.82 (Creepiness).

Ugly face 2: 2.23 (Ugliness); 3.64 (Creepiness).

Ugly face 3: 2.22 (Ugliness); 2.96 (Creepiness).

NEUTRAL FACES

Neutral faces were selected from The Chicago Face Database (Ma et al., 2015) under the criteria that they showed middle ratings in the aesthetic dimension and high ratings in the creepiness dimension (i.e., “not creepy at all”).

Neutral face 1: 4.86 (Ugliness); 6.08 (Creepiness).

Neutral face 2: 4.12 (Ugliness); 5.95 (Creepiness).

Neutral face 3: 4.61 (Ugliness); 5.93 (Creepiness).

Appendix B

Table 2 Attribute items
Full size table

Moral character measure: predictions of the target face’s behaviors

Six items:

¿ Cuál de las siguientes nueve caras te parece más probable que … *Cocine y se coma a su propio perro, el cual murió por causas naturales. *Tenga relaciones sexuales con una gallina muerta.

*Se niegue a pagarle al tratamiento contra el cáncer a su madre. *Se niegue a cederle el asiento a una anciana con discapacidad. *Sea aficionado a los videos de pornografía infantil. *Decida llevarse una billetera que encontró perdida en la mesa de un restaurante.

Table 3 D-Measures for each ST-IAT
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Rosa, A.OL., Villacampa, J., Corradi, G. et al. The creepy, the bad and the ugly: exploring perceptions of moral character and social desirability in uncanny faces. Curr Psychol 42, 1146–1156 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01452-w

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