Owen Helen E, Halberstadt Jamin, Carr Evan W, Winkielman Piotr
Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Department of Psychology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2016 Feb 4;11(2):e0146328. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146328. eCollection 2016.
Individuals that combine features of both genders-gender blends-are sometimes appealing and sometimes not. Heretofore, this difference was explained entirely in terms of sexual selection. In contrast, we propose that part of individuals' preference for gender blends is due to the cognitive effort required to classify them, and that such effort depends on the context in which a blend is judged. In two studies, participants judged the attractiveness of male-female morphs. Participants did so after classifying each face in terms of its gender, which was selectively more effortful for gender blends, or classifying faces on a gender-irrelevant dimension, which was equally effortful for gender blends. In both studies, gender blends were disliked when, and only when, the faces were first classified by gender, despite an overall preference for feminine features in all conditions. Critically, the preferences were mediated by the effort of stimulus classification. The results suggest that the variation in attractiveness of gender-ambiguous faces may derive from context-dependent requirements to determine gender membership. More generally, the results show that the difficulty of resolving social category membership-not just attitudes toward a social category-feed into perceivers' overall evaluations toward category members.
兼具男女两性特征的个体——性别混合体——有时具有吸引力，有时则不然。在此之前，这种差异完全是从性选择的角度来解释的。相比之下，我们认为个体对性别混合体的部分偏好是由于对其进行分类所需的认知努力，而这种努力取决于判断混合体的背景。在两项研究中，参与者对男女形态的吸引力进行了评判。参与者在根据性别对每张脸进行分类后进行评判，对性别混合体而言，这种分类选择性地更费力，或者在与性别无关的维度上对脸进行分类，对性别混合体而言，这种分类同样费力。在两项研究中，只有当脸首先按性别分类时，性别混合体才会不受喜欢，尽管在所有条件下总体上都偏好女性特征。至关重要的是，偏好是由刺激分类的努力所介导的。结果表明，性别模糊面孔吸引力的差异可能源于确定性别归属时依赖于背景的要求。更普遍地说，结果表明解决社会类别归属的难度——不仅仅是对社会类别的态度——会影响感知者对类别成员的总体评价。
