Scientific Blackpill: Difference between revisions

Ward & Scott (2018) constructed composite images from young White men with the "most extreme scores" on three separate mental health inventories, relating to depression, schizotypy, and Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

The purpose of the study was to determine if an individual can accurately gauge another individuals mental health in a first impression scenario.

The male subjects were instructed to maintain a neutral facial expression while being photographed, and care was taken to ensure that the men in the photos had no unique distinguishing features related to self-adornment (e.g. jewelry, glasses, beards), that might possibly bias results.  

These three disorders were partly chosen because of the differences in the symptoms and pathology between them, and because the traits related to these disorders are also present to a greater or lesser extent in sub-clinical (below the diagnostic threshold for the disorder) populations.

253 observers (Women N = 173, Men N = 73, "not reported" N = 7) rated the composite photos in regards to their perceptions of the target photographs mental health, masculinity, and attractiveness. An additional group of observers were recruited to rate physical health (N = 50).

The images were presented in a fashion that ensued that each observer rated every composite image only once for a single parameter (i.e mental health, attractiveness etc.)  This was to avoid halo effects and other biases that would potentially distort the mean ratings of the images. Observers were also instructed to rate occluded images of the stimuli, such as the inner facial features only and the eyes only.

It was found that perceived mental health accurately reflected actual mental health. While physical attractiveness, perceived health, and facial masculinity or the combination thereof of these traits influenced observer's judgement of the stimuli, this did not fully explain the relationship that was found between actual mental health and perceived mental health at first impression, which was stated to be robust. This suggests that there are cues of mental health which are largely unrelated to physical attractiveness.

The researchers suggested that the observers may be picking up a general risk factor or "p factor" in the physical aspect of the composite images, which is suggested to be risk factor for various mental disorders, itself strongly related to the big-five personality trait neuroticism, also said to be an underlying general factor that is associated with various types of mental disorders.

The ability to perceive mental disorders through facial appearance was hypothesized to be related to signalling theory, specifically the researchers speculated that is in the organism's favor to generally send "honest signals" of various traits, (even socially undesirable ones), because of the threat of a false signal being discovered to be false and this leading to the signaller being punished for their "deceit" in sending a false signal to others. So even though it would likely be maladaptive for the mentally ill to honestly signal their disorders in such a fashion, at the population level this would be potentially out-weighted by the benefits of honest signals in relation to more favored traits.

The researchers stated that this finding also implies that those who suffer from mental health disorders are at risk of being trapped in a "vicious cycle" where their accurately perceived mental health cause others to shun and exclude them, and otherwise induce negative reactions in observers, and this social isolation and mistreatment results in worsened mental health.

The researchers suggested that possible effects of physical appearance, in regards to the etiology and strengthening of mental disorders represented a largely unexplored element of psychology.