importance of facial features, determining gender by college students

Abstract

The importance of facial features in determining gender by college students was evaluated in this experiment. The participants were 62 college students from a small Southeastern university who were shown 48 pictures, 24 males and 24 females. In each picture a different region of the face of the person in the photo was covered. There regions were the mouth and eyes. In 16 pictures the full face was shown. There were eight pictures showing full face, eight pictures showing only the eyes and eight pictures showing only the mouth for each gender. The results indicated the mean was high for full face, followed by eyes, then mouth. The total means were 7.72 for full face, 7.40 for eyes, and 5.92 for mouth. The standard deviation was lower for full face, followed by eyes, then mouth. The total standard deviations were .52 for full face, .83 for eyes, and 1.46 for mouth. The current study demonstrates that of the different regions of the face, the gender of a person can most easily...