The influence of dentofacial appearance on the social attractiveness of young adults

The in@uence of dentofixcial appearance on the social attractiveness of young adults

W. C. Shaw

W. C. Shaw,* G. Rees, M. Dawe, and C. R. Charles Manchester,

England

The purpose of the study was to determine whether the social attractiveness of a young adult would be influenced by his or her dentofacial appearance. Black and white photographs of an attractive male, an unattractive male, an attractive female, and an unattractive female were obtained and modified so that, for each face, five different photographic versions were available. In each version, the face was standardized except that a different dentofacial arrangement was demonstrated. These were normal incisors, prominent incisors, absence of upper left lateral incisor, severely crowdecl incisors, and unilateral cleft lip. Eight hundred young adults were shown one of the twenty photographs ancl asked to estimate the represented individual’s social characteristics along a number of bipolar scales. Each photograph was viewed by a different group of forty young adults, equally divided as to sex. Their impressions of the depicted individuals’ social attractiveness hrere recorded on visual analogue scales. The experimental procedure was such that the effect and interaction of different levels of facial attractiveness, different dentofacial .srrangements, sex of the photographed individual, and sex of the judge could be analyzed. Faces displaying a normal incisor relationship gained the most favorable ratings for eight of the ten characteristics examined, and in four of these differences across the range of dental conditions were statistically significant. These were perceived friendliness, social class, popularity, and intelligence. The prominent incisor condition was rated highest for compliance and honesty, while the condition representing a unilateral cleft consistently attracted low ratings. Background facial attractiveness of either the male or female stimuli was often more assertive than the individual dental condition. The hypothesis that young adults with a normal dental appearance would be judged to be more socially attractive over a range of personal characteristics was upheld.

Key words: Social attractiveness, dental appearance, malocclusion, appearance, social psychology

A

lthough the cosmetic implications of malocclusion are generally regarded to be important, relatively little active research has been directed toward such topics as personal and parental perceptions of dental appearance, professional-versus-public judgments of orthodontic treatment need, and social response to impaired dental appearance. The study reported here is one of a series directed toward the last topic, and the relevant literature has recently been reviewed elsewhere.’ By way of summary, it seems reasonable to conclude that subjects with an attractive facial appearance are judged, on first impressions, to possess more socially desirable personality traits than their less attractive counterparts. The influence of individual facial features is less clear, save for the evidence that, in the male’s judgment, enlarged pupils may enhance the attractiveness of the female face. As for dental features, previous investigations have been limited ma.inly to es-

tablishing a hierarchy of preference for different dental arrangements or to judgments of treatment need. These studies suggest that a widely held “form concept” prevails, such that professional concepts of ideal occlusion are also shared by the public, although the range of occlusion considered to be acceptable if not ideal is not yet clearly defined. Few investigators have tackled the more interesting question as to whether a person’s dental appearance significantly influences the first impressions that he or she evokes in real life or even in experimental settings. Certainly, in two studies in which the primary interest in dental features was concealed from the judges, a photograph of a young woman’s face displaying a normal incisor relationship gained higher rankings for attractiveness than variations of the same photograph portraying a range of incisal deviations.*, 3

This approach was extended in a forerunner of the present study in order to determine whether the social

*Professor of Orthodontics and Dentofacial School, University of Manchester.

Development,

The Turner Dental

attractiveness of a child would be influenced by his or her dentofacial appearance.’ Portrait photographs of an attractive boy and girl and an unattractive boy and girl 21

22

Shaw

et al.

less likely to behave aggressively than children portraying dentofacial anomalies was upheld. EXPERIMENTAL HYPOTHESIS In accordance with the above, a further hypothesis was established for the present replicative study. It was predicted that photographs of young adults with a normal dental appearance, in contrast to those with a dentofacial anomaly, would be judged by their peers to be more socially attractive over a range of personal characteristics. It was also predicted that a high level of background facial attractiveness would be positively associated with social attractiveness. MATERIALS AND METHOD General design Portrait photographs of two young men and two young women were obtained and modified so that, for each face, five different photographic versions were available. In each version the face was standardized, except that a different dentofacial arrangement was demonstrated (Fig. 1). Eight hundred young adults were shown one of the twenty photographs and asked to estimate the represented person’s social characteristics along a number of bipolar scales. Selection of the four basic test faces

Fig. 1. Test faces for attractive male showing normal incisors, cleft lip, crowded incisors, missing lateral incisor, and prominent incisors. were obtained and modified so that, for each face, five different photographic versions were available. In each version, the child’s face was standardized except that a different dentofacial arrangement was demonstrated. These were normal incisors, prominent incisors, absence of a lateral incisor, severely crowded incisors, and unilateral cleft lip. Each photograph was viewed by a different group of 42 children and 42 adults, equally divided by sex. Their impressions of the depicted child’s social attractiveness were recorded on visual analogue scales. The experimental procedure was such that the effect and interaction of different levels of facial attractiveness, different dentofacial arrangements, sex of photographed child, and sex of judge could be analyzed. The hypothesis that children with a normal dental appearance would be judged to be better looking, more desirable as friends, more intelligent, and

Black and white portrait views of thirty males and thirty females were obtained from the matriculation photographs of a South Wales college. The sixty photographs were selected at random from a large collection, the only criteria being that the subject had been smiling widely at the time of photographic recording. The teeth were obscured and the photographs were presented in random order to sixty young adult judges, equally divided as to sex. The judges rated the facial attractiveness of each photograph on a seven-point scale to allow ranking. The extremes of the continuum being avoided, an attractive male and female face and an unattractive male and female face, for whom a consensus of agreement had been recorded for judges of both sexes, were selected. Modification

of dental features

Photographic enlargements were prepared and the natural teeth were replaced with scale photographs of acrylic teeth mounted in wax to represent five different dental arrangements-normal incisors, prominent incisors, absence of upper left lateral incisor, severely crowded incisors, and an arrangement representing dental appearance in a unilateral cleft case. The cleft modification was overlaid to give the appearance of a repaired lip, and in the prominent-incisor variation

Volume 87 Number 1

Injluence

ATTRACTIVE-”

Friendly

U-A

Extrovert

U--A*

Social class

u-

Compliant

A-U u-

A”..

u-

p+.**

Honest

AU

Kind

AU

Intelligent

” --

,?,” AX”

u-

t Lowest

23

A”’

Full

attractive

appearance

- UNATTRACTIVE

Popular

Sexuallv

of dentofacial

1 +10

I +5

I +15

Fig. 2. Main effects for background attractiveness of the photographed face. Distance between U (unattractive) and A (attractive) indicates magnitude of difference between respective means on 100 mm visual analogue scale. For each social characteristic, the ratings are plotted with the lowest rating coincident. Probability levels p < 0.05, p < 0.01, and p < 0.001 are denoted by one, two, and three asterisks.

shading of the mental fold was exaggerated (Fig. 1). The reconstructed enlargements were rephotographed and reduced to original size, thus providing the twenty test photographs for the experiment. Rating scales Ratings of ten personal characteristics were sought. For this, 100 mm visual analogue scales4 were used, with extremities defined by the following bipolar adjectives; friendly/unfriendly, introvert/extrovert, high social class/low social class, aggressive/compliant, popular/unpopoular, fun/boring, dishonest/honest, kind/ unkind, unintelligent/intelligent, sexually attractive/ sexually unattractive.

DENTAL

Friendly

HCM-P

Extrovert

MH-C-PN

Social class

H-M-C-

Compliant

H-C-M-N

Popular

H-CP-M

Full

PMC-H-N

Honest

MHC-N-P

Kind

C-HPM

Intelligent

H-C-M-P-N+

Sexually

attractive

CONDITION

The survey was carried out at six colleges of higher education attended by part-time or full-time students from a wide range of social backgrounds. Eight hundred students, equally divided as to sex, were enlisted at random and invited to take part in a psychological study about the way in which judgments are made on the basis of facial appearance. Throughout the survey, the investigators’ interest in dental features was concealed and each judge was shown only one of the twenty test photographs. The photograph shown to each judge was drawn from the set of twenty in a cyclical manner to avoid the possibility of undetectable sampling bias. Judges were interviewed individually .

P-N’* P’” N”

N

H-P-MC-N

I

Procedure

N””

Lowest

I +5

I +10

Fig. 3. Main effects for dental condition. Distance between H (harelip), C (crowding), M (missing incisor), P (prominent incisor), and N (normal incisor) indicates magnitude of difference between respective means on 100 mm visual analogue scale. For each social characteristic, the ratings are plotted with the lowest rating coincident. Probability levels as in Fig. 2.

Analysis and presentation The scores obtained in reply to each question represented the dependent variables; independent variables were sex of the photographed individual (X2), attractiveness of the photographed individual (x2), dental variations represented ( X 5)) and sex of judge ( x 2). For

24

Shaw et ul. MALE-v-FEMALE

Friendly

F

Extrovert

F

Social class

F

Compliant

F

Popular

F

Full

F

Honest

F-M

Kind

F

Intelligent

F

Sexually

attractive

M”I” M*” M+** M’ MI** M”“”

M’“” M***

F

M**

I Lowest

+5

I

I Cl0

1 +15

Fig. 4. Main effects for sex of photographed face. Distance between F (female) and M (male) indicates magnitude of difference between respective means on 100 mm visual analogue scale. For each social characteristic, the ratings are plotted with the lowest rating coincident. Probability levels as in Fig. 2.

each personality trait, four-way analysis of variance of the ratings was performed to determine main effects and factor interactions, and breakdown tables of the mean score for all subsamples were computed. Since visual analogue rating gave a relative as opposed to an absolute measure of attitude, the ratings in Figs. 2 to 4 were plotted with the lowest rating for each characteristic coincident. Significance levels are denoted by asterisks (* = p < 0.05; ** = p < 0.01; *** = p < 0.001). RESULTS For a number of traits, support for the initial hypothesis emerges. Effect of background photographed face

attractiveness

of the

Six significant main effects were obtained (Fig. 2), indicating that the persons with faces of high background attractiveness were judged to be more extroverted, of higher social class, more popular, more interesting, more intelligent, and of higher sexual attractiveness. Effect of dental condition Notably, faces displaying a normal incisor relationship gained the most favorable ratings for eight of the ten characteristics examined (Fig. 3), and in four of these, differences across the range of dental conditions were statistically significant. These were perceived friendliness, social class, popularity, and intelligence.

The prominent incisor condition was rated highest for compliance and honesty, while the condition representing a unilateral cleft consistently attracted low ratings. Sex effects Unexpectedly, clear-cut main effects emerged for male-versus-female photographs. For all ten personal characteristics sampled, the mean ratings for the male photographs were more generous than for the females, the difference reaching statistical significance at the 5% level or better in all but one case (Fig. 4). In contrast, sex of the judge had little apparent bearing on the ratings given. Only in the case of judgments of compliance was there a significant main effect, males giving slightly higher rating on the perceived compliance of the stimulus individual (p < 0.05). Factor interactions Some interesting two-way interactions between the sex and attractiveness of the photographs emerged (Table I). In the case of the attractive girl, for example, less favorable ratings were recorded with regard to her perceived friendliness, honesty, and kindness. The unattractive female was rated especially low on her sexual attractiveness and perceived social class. The attractive male seems to have been perceived to be particularly interesting. Two-way interactions between sex and dental condition are less easily interpreted (Table II). There is indication, however, that the unattractive dental conditions are a particular disadvantage in the female as re-

Influence of dentofucial

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25

Table 1. Significant interactions: Sex of stimulus X attractiveness of stimulus

Friendly Social class Interesting Honest Kind Sexually attractive The table lists judges’ pooled favorable ratings. Significance

Attractive male

Unattractive male

Attractive female

female

68.9 56.7 60.3 62.4 65.6 58.6

63.6 54.2 50.4 58.1 58.7 36.4

54.4 53.8 52.1 55.3 52.6 47.8

62.1 41.8 47.8 60.6 62.4 28.4

average ratings of various social traits (scale O-100) levels for analysis of varknce are also listed.

for the four

Unattractive

subgroups

P
shown.

Higher

scores

indicate

more

Table II. Significant interactions: Sex of stimulus X dental condition Crowded

Missin;:

k;s Friendly Extrovert Social class Compliant Kind

11.1 45.4 57.2 62.1 63.3

The table lists judges’ more favorable ratings.

60.1 48.3 50.6 51.6 59.3

65.9 43 58.9 63.7 64.3

62.8 50.2 49.8 61.3 60

Prominent iyici;

Normal in;nz

70.7 42.1 60.5 67.3 62.9

64.7 47.4 54.2 56.7 61.4

tffhk$

pooled average ratings for the various social traits (scale O-100) Significance levels for analysis o-: variance are also listed.

gards judgments of friendliness, extroversion, and social class. For the male faces, the prominent-incisor condition appears to have evoked perceptions of greater compliance. A number of statistically significant effects emerged for the three-way interactions of sex, attractiveness, and dental condition, but these were essentially cumulative effects along the directions already described. The three-way breakdown for sex, attractiveness, and dental condition of stimuli did, however, underline the strong predictive effect of background facial attractiveness. Attractiveness of either the male or female stimuli was often more assertive than the individual dental condition; that is, all ratings for the attractive person, including harelip, crowding, etc., were higher than all ratings for the unattractive person of the same sex, even when a normal condition was displayed by the latter. Close inspection of the individual ranks for dental condition failed to reveal any clear pattern of stereotyping for specific dental conditions. While the main effect for the normal incisor arrangement was favorable (Table II) this condition did not invariably head the rankings for the individual-stimulus persons through the various personal characteristics.

58.9 50.6 48.8 53.9 58.7

$2:: 53.6 52.9 44.8 51.4 51.2

for the four subgroups

:ZZZ 58.4 48 48.4 53.4 57.9 shown.

:zr

P 55.6 50.6 48.3 57.6 57.9

Higher

co.01 co.05 co.05 co.01 co.05 scores

indicate

DISCUSSION

Shortcomings in design and real-life applicability of this type of investigation have been referred to before1 but, within the confines of the experimental setting, it would seem that a normal dentofacial appearance in the young adult contributes positively to judgments made about a variety of personal characteristics. This is consistent with the results of the related study described previously when photographs of 1l-year-old children were used. Both studies also indicate, however, that background facial attractiveness is a more influential cue in impression formation of this kind, to the extent that a face of high general attractiveness, even when displaying unattractive dentofacial features, may evoke more favorable perceptions than an unattractive face displaying normal incisors. In the previous investigation, female photographs generally gained more favorable ratings than male photographs. This effect was reversed in the present study where, with remarkable consistency, the male photographs were rated more generously. It is also interesting that this bias in response should be shared by both the male and female judges. It must be remembered, however, that whereas male-versus-female is a straightforward dichotomy, attractiveness has to be regarded as

26

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Am. J Orthod. Jonuan I985

et 01.

a long continuum between ugliness and beauty. This being so, it is possible that the male faces used were more attractive than their female counterparts and that this or some other undetected cue was responsible for the pro-male bias. A further explanation may be the observation that physical attractiveness is a more important factor in the evaluation of females and is more critically judged in them.5 It is also noteworthy that the “beautiful equals good” stereotype did not operate uniformly in favor of the attractive woman; that is, she was judged to be less friendly, less kind, and less honest than her unattractive counterpart. A similar reversal of the physical attractiveness hypothesis was found in a study of American students, where attractive women were expected to be more conceited, egotistical, likely to engage in adultery, and unsympathetic.6 For studies of this kind, conducted so as to exclude the myriad of variables attending genuine human interaction, only guarded extrapolation is appropriate. In a recent, related study of teachers’ expectations, for example, no bias consistent with dental or facial attractiveness stereotyping could be demonstrated in a setting which incorporated a greater “real-life” component.7 Nonetheless, the demonstration of stereotyped responses attributed to facial appearance is entirely consistent with findings from a host of other studies,* and, while the impact of conspicuous dentofacial defects during the formation of first impressions cannot be quantified, they probably represent a disadvantage that most young adults would prefer to do without. Less certain is the degree to which first impressions continue to operate in subsequent interaction when the perceiver has the opportunity to process further information about the subject. Such evidence as is available suggests, however, that initial impressions may have an extended influence. For example, in the supposed setting of a computer dating program among college students, the physical attractiveness of a partner was a stronger predictor of the continuing desire to sustain a relationship than any of a large number of other attributes or interests.g A similar conclusion was reached in a study of friendship in a summer camp setting.” Such effects appear to lie in the domain of selffulfilling prophecy, and studies with young adults have shown that not only are the physically attractive judged to be more socially attractive, but the nature of interaction with them actually elicits and nurtures behavior in accord with the stereotype” and may, in turn, lead them to become more socially skilled.‘*, l3

CONCLUSION

This investigation provides some theoretical sociologic justification for orthodontic intervention to improve dental appearance when the degree of cosmetic impairment is of the order represented in this study. The magnitude of the social disadvantage which actually operates in real life, however, calls for more comprehensive naturalistic investigation in which a fuller range of personal qualities and attitudes is sampled. REFERENCES 1. Shaw WC: The influence of children’s dentofacial appearance on their social attractiveness as judged by peers and lay adults. AN J ORTHOD 79: 399-415, 1981. 2. Sergl HG, Stodt W: Experimental investigation of the aesthetic effect of various tooth positions after loss of an incisor tooth. Trans Eur Orthod Sot, pp. 497-507, 1970. 3. Sergl HG, Schmidt H: Experimentelle Untersuchungen zur asthetiscen Wirkung charakteristischer Anomalien der Frontzahnstellung. Fortschr Kieferorthop 34: 359-369, 1973. 4. Aitken RCB: Measurement of feeling using visual analogue scales. Proc R Sot Med 62: 989-993, 1969. 5. Bar-Tal D, Saxe L: Physical attractiveness and its relationship to sex-role stereotyping. Sex Roles 2: 123-133, 1976. 6. Dermer M, Thiel DL: When beauty may fail. J Pers Sot Psycho1 31: 1168.1196, 1975. 7. Shaw WC, Humphries S: Influence of children’s dentofacial appearance on teacher expectations. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol 10: 313-319, 1982. 8. Adams GR: Physical attractiveness research: toward a developmental social psychology of beauty. Hum Dev 20: 217-239, 1977. 9. Walster E, Aronson V, Abrahams D, Rottman L: Importance of physical attractiveness in dating behaviour. J Pers Sot Psycho1 4: 508-516, 1966. 10. Kleck RE, Richardson SA, Ronald L: Physical appearance cues and interpersonal attraction in children. Child Dev 45: 305-310, 1974. 11. Snyder M, Tanke ED, Berscheid E: Social perception and interpersonal behaviour: on the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes. J Pers Sot Psycho1 35: 656-666, 1977. AA: Physical attractiveness, social relations 12. Krebs D, Adinolfi and personality style. J Pers Sot Psycho1 31: 245-253, 1975. 13. Goldman W, Lewis P: Beautiful is good: evidence that the physically attractive are more socially skilled. J Exp Sot Psychol, 13: 125-130, 1977. Reprint

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Prof. W. C. Shaw Department of Orthodontics University of Manchester Turner Dental School Bridgeford Street Manchester, Ml5 6FH, England