Masami K. Yamaguchi, Takashi Kato, Shigeru Akamatsu
Femininity and masculinity of the face
Abstract:This article presents two studies investigating the relationships between physical measurements and psychological judgments of human faces. The first study was concerned with the gender classification and the second with the femininity-masculinity judgment of male and female faces. A variety of physical measurements were taken on 36 male and 36 female faces and subjected to discriminant analysis. One group of subjects was asked to classify each face as male or female and another group to rate each face on a femininity-masculinity scale. While female faces were in general more accurately classified by the discriminant analysis than were male faces, male faces were in turn more accurately classified by the subjects. Multiple regression analysis indicated that the femininity-masculinity rating for female faces was less accountable than that for male faces, suggesting that the femininity-masculinity judgment of female faces depends on non-spatial factors to a larger degree.