A Multidimensional Scaling Approach to the Studies of Facial Perception

Abstract

Twenty facial photos of Caucasian men were simultaneously presented to the subject. On each trial, one of the photos was chosen as a reference to be compared with the remaining 19. The subject was to place them on a 5-foot spatial scale based on the judged similarity between the reference and each of the remaining photos. Similarity distances were recorded. There were 20 trials per subject. Data from eight raters were then analyzed by the use of SINDSCAL. Of the 10 dimensions from the SINDSCAL analysis, four had significant correlations with mustache, hair length, hair shade and chin curve. The other five were substantially accounted for by subsets of the facial features. This technique is considered to be useful and complementary to the feature-oriented approach.