Abstract
Previous work has shown that individuals agree across cultures in impressions of facial attractiveness and babyfaceness and the traits that they infer from faces. However, only one previous investigation has studied relatively isolated ethnocultural groups to eliminate the potential effect of Western media exposure (Jones, 1996). The results showed a lower intergroup agreement between Western groups and two South American Indian groups. The current research also compared a relatively isolated group, Tsimane in Bolivian Amazon, with White Americans, expanding on Jones’ research in three ways: 1) we studied intra and inter group agreement in impressions of babyfaceness and trait impressions in addition to attractiveness; 2) we also studied the generalizability of two face stereotypes across cultures; and 3) we improved the methodology by using understandable numerical ratings for Tsimane’ participants. We would expect substantial agreement in facial stereotypes as there might be an evolutionary basis for those associations, though media influences are reduced with this isolated group. Forty White Americans and 55 Tsimane’ male faces were rated on attractiveness, babyfaceness, health, knowledgeability, dominance, and warmth scales by different groups of White American and Tsimane’ young adults. High intracultural reliabilities showed that people of each culture agreed with their in-group on the ratings of own and other-cultural faces. Also, intercultural agreement revealed the high likelihood that people among two totally different cultures shared similar criteria for judging facial qualities and traits. Moreover, participants from both cultures showed a consistent attractiveness halo effect (attribution of positive traits to attractive people) which contributed substantially to the intercultural agreement. When own and other-culture judgments of the attractiveness of the faces were statistically controlled, intercultural agreement on trait ratings were weakened. The babyfaceness overgeneralization effect (attribution of childlike traits to babyfaced people) did not show cross-cultural consensus. In sum, the finding of a universal stereotype of attractiveness across these two different cultural groups is consistent with evolutionary theory. On the other hand, the cultural specificity of the babyfaceness stereotype may indicate that impressions of babyfaced individuals are dependent on particular ethonocultural contexts.