Aging is in the eye of the beholder: Eye-tracking and person-perception analyses of young and old faces

To examine possible mechanisms related to negative attitudes of aging revealed in face processing patterns, young and old participants rated their first impressions (positive or negative) of 100 faces of young and old individuals taken from the CAL/PAL Fate Database (Minear & Park, 2004) while gaze patterns were recorded using eye-tracking methods. In a follow-up study, an independent sample of young participants rated the same 100 faces on competence, attractiveness, and subjective age in order to further assess age-related stereotypes. This study replicated the T-gaze pattern in previous eye-tracking studies (Firestone, Turk, Browne, & Ryan 2007). We also found evidence of a positivity effect exhibited by older adults on two measures of positivity. Further analyses of measures of perceptions of aging revealed that young faces were viewed more positively on dimensions of attractiveness and competence. These findings are in line with research on a negative aging stereotypes. The current study is grounded in socialcognitive theories of stereotyping and has implications for older adults as targets of discrimination and social distancing (Chasteen, 2005). AGING IS IN THE EYE 3 Research shows that facial cues are related to negative stereotypes. The most salient appearance cues are race, sex, age, and facial expression, in that order (Milord, 1978). Cues of aging, for example, influence people’s perceptions of older adults. In one study, older adults who looked younger were rated more favorably by college students and children than older-looking older adults (Hummert, 1994). In another study, even older adults rated photographs of the oldest-looking older adults more negatively than did middle-aged and younger adults (Hummert, Garstka, & Shaner, 1997). Taken together, these studies suggest that faces are powerful sources of stereotypes, and in particular, that aging in faces may cue age-related stereotypes. Evidence suggests that when studying faces similar to their own, individuals are more likely to remember and discriminate these faces better than faces that are different. Studies in face recognition and person identification reveal an “own-age bias,” suggesting adults are more likely to identify, recognize, and remember faces when viewing faces of their own age (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2006). Sporer (2001) proposed an in-group/out-group model (IOM) of face processing that suggest that this occurs because people employ different processing strategies when viewing in-group versus out-group faces. Specifically, out-group faces are viewed more superficially by in-group members, and are placed quickly into an out-group category without further attentional processing. Research on the own-age bias using event-related potential (ERP) and eye-tracking methods supports this claim, finding that age is important in regard to the experience the subject has with the target face (Melinder, Gredebäck, Westerlund, & Nelson, 2010). The IOM model is further supported by evidence in face recognition and person identification, where participants were more likely to recognize faces that fell within their same age group (Bartlett & Fulton, 1991). The operation of in-group and out-group biases may put one group at a disadvantage if only out-group faces are used in face identification studies. For AGING IS IN THE EYE 4 example, presentation of younger faces only put older participants at a disadvantage when required to process and recognize young faces (Bastin & Van der Linden, 2003). Restricting target face stimuli to one age introduces a confounding variable when analyzing age group differences of perceivers on face recognition tasks. Thus, it is important to use face stimuli systematically by balancing face stimuli age with perceiver age to take into counteract the ownage bias effect. In order to address this problem, Minear and Park (2004) created the CAL/PAL Face Database, a large representative sample of photographs of faces from people of different ages. This database allows researchers to systematically vary the age of faces used as experimental stimuli when conducting age-comparative studies. Information on specific characteristics of the face stimuli (e.g., attractiveness, likeability) has been collected by Ebner (2008) but is incomplete. One purpose of the present study was to collect additional information on faces from the CAL/PAL database for researchers to use in future age-comparative studies. When viewing faces, humans tend to focus on the eyes, nose, and mouth (Firestone et al., 2007), but this tendency varies by age of face and perceiver. Human faces of different ages differ on several aspects. Physiognomic cues for age include placement of eyes, nose, and mouth, size of the cheeks, texture of skin, and presence and color of hair (Berry & McArthur, 1986). Past research suggests that when determining the age of a face, human vision is sensitive to differences and changes in features and age-associated changes, even when subtle and difficult to describe (Bruce & Young, 1998). In addition to these surface-level features, faces may convey underlying personality characteristics or behavior and motive structures (Berry & McArthur, 1986; Berscheid & Walster, 1874). Since negative stereotypes and generalized expectations of older adults are well documented, it seems plausible that the perceived age of face may influence underlying personality characteristics that individuals assign to a face. For example, the AGING IS IN THE EYE 5 perceived age of a face may strongly influence on how attractive or competent a face is seen to be. In line with this assumption, Ebner (2008) found that old faces from the CAL/PAL Face Database were judged as less positive than young faces from the database on characteristics of attractiveness, likability, distinctiveness, growth-orientation, and energy. These effects may be due to stereotypes and generalized expectations regarding aging. A recent review of age stereotypes indicates that older adults hold more complex views of aging than do younger adults (Hummert, 2011), and a meta-analysis of attitudes towards aging supports this claim (Kite, Stockdale, Whitley, & Johnson, 2005). Greater complexity and differentiation is consistent with the out-group homogeneity principle, which predicts that “. perception of variability within a stereotyped group is influenced by one’s status as an in-group or out-group member” (Park & Rothbart, 1982, p. 1052). Specifically, people tend to perceive out-group members as more similar and in-group members as more diverse. Indeed, in-group differentiation, variability, and favoritism (the ‘in-group favoritism effect’) by older adults have been demonstrated empirically (Chasteen, 2005; Linville, Fischer, & Salovey, 1989). By extrapolation, perceptions of older adults held by older adults should be more heterogeneous, differentiated, and favorable than those held by younger adults. One purpose of the present study is to uncover one source of age-related stereotypes held by younger adults, specifically, biased processing of facial features of older adults through the usage of eye-tracking technology. A second purpose is to provide face-specific ratings for a subset of young and old faces from the CAL/PAL Face Database in order to assess stereotypical processing of faces of different ages. In our study, participants were asked to judge 50 young and 50 old faces in terms of first impression (positive or negative), attractiveness, competence, and subjective age. These dimensions were selected as they seem relevant for judging, processing, AGING IS IN THE EYE 6 and remembering young and old faces, and therefore provide relevant information for future agecomparative research using face stimuli. Attractiveness and subjective age estimates may be influenced by surface-level facial features, while ratings of competence refer to underlying personality characteristics that lie “behind the face” (Berry & McArthur, 1986). In this study, we assumed that ratings of faces will be strongly influenced by stereotypes and general expectations held by younger and older adults. The research reported here draws from several previous studies that examined stereotypes of aging and face processing, both explicit and implicit. We examined age differences in perceptions of old and young faces, and we examined how younger adults perceive the attractiveness, competence, and subjective age of younger and older adults. This research is important because older adults are often targets of discrimination and social distancing (Chasteen, 2005; Luszcz & Fitzgerald, 1986), and report feeling “invisible” to younger cohorts (Spiro, 2009; Simon, 1996). We hypothesized that younger adults would process faces of different ages according to in-group and out-group biases (Park & Rothbert, 1982). This would result in younger adults viewing faces of their own age group holistically while viewing those of an out-group, older adults, in a more feature-based manner. If our hypothesis is correct, younger adults should focus more on characteristics of older faces that indicate aging, such as wrinkles around the mouth, eyes, and neck. In contrast, older adults should be more likely to view young and old faces more equivalently and holistically, looking at main features such as the mouth, nose, and eyes, as well as characteristics of aging to distinguish faces. According to the IOM model of face processing, older adults, unlike younger adults, should tend to individuate older faces. We also predicted that younger adults would display patterns of the in-group favoritism effect, judging old faces as less positive than young faces, and rating older faces as less attractive and competent. AGING IS IN THE EYE 7