9th Annual WML Academic Symposium

Time: 11:30
Room: 301
Presenter(s): Hannah Grace Allison, Dakota Dawn Goldsmith
Title: Facial Profiling
Developed under the guidance of Dr. Jutta Street , Psychology

The researchers investigated the connections between perceived positive and negative attributes in unaltered and altered photos of arrestees. Utilizing a popular beauty application “InstaBeauty,” we altered the appearance of six female arrestees in order to make them better fit common social beauty standards. We used the altered photos and unaltered photos in a survey to measure perceived positive and negative attributes based on appearance alone. There were 61 participants, a majority of which were female and Caucasian. Our findings indicate that the altered photos had a higher percentage of positive traits attributed to them. Unaltered photos of African American women were perceived to be more aggressive in appearance compared to Caucasian women.