The Relationship Between Facial Width-to-Height Ratio And Intimate Partner Violence

Facial width-to-height ratio(FWHR)is a structural feature of faces that is commonly measured as the ratio between bizygomatic width(the distance from left to right zygion)and upper face height(distance between nasion and prosthion).To date,many studies have found that FWHR is sexually dimorphic and correlated to psychological and behavioral characteristics.For example,recent work has demonstrated that individuals with higher FWHR display higher propensity towards antisocial tendencies,such as interpersonal aggressive,behavioural dominance,cheating and deception.Additional,not only do people with higher FWHR exhibit these behavioural and psychological characteristics,but they are also perceived as more aggressive,untrustworthy,and dominant.Most previous researches related to FWHR have mainly focused on the relationship with aggressive in general situation.The existence of this correlation in specific situation such as family,school,or intimate relationship remains unknown.Therefore,on the basis of previous research,this study was aimed to migrate the relationship between FWHR and aggression to a specific situation,intimate relationship,to further verify whether individuals’ FWHR could predict their intimate partner violence(one type aggressive behaviour in intimate relationships)as well as the effect of FWHR on individuals’ perception of intimate partner violence.In view of the limitations of the manipulation of FWHR in the field of face perception and the neglect of the similar characteristics,namely FWHR-L(ratio between face width and low face height)in the past,this study further explored the effect of FWHR,FWHR-L and their separating components of face(face width,face height and face length)on face perception by adopting two different way.The purpose of Experiment 1 was to explore the correlation between FWHR and intimate partner violence as well as its calibration variables in behavioral tendency,which aimed to further verify the correlation between FWHR and aggressive in intimate relationship.Experiment 2 explored the effect of FWHR and FWHR-L on individual’s perception of intimate partner violence,aggression and other characteristics,using original pictures as stimulus materials in previous mainstream paradigm.And in Experiment 3 and Experiment 4,the studies used a new method to manipulate pictures’ FWHR as well as FWHR-L and investigated the independent and combined contribution of face width,face height and length during the formation of social judgements,such as intimate partner violence and related characteristics.The main results and conclusions were as follows:(1)Results of the three indicators of FWHR indicated that FWHR was not a sexually dimorphic characteristic,while BMI and FWHR-L displayed significant sexual difference.FWHR in males was positively correlated with physical aggression.Though FWHR couldn’t predict intimate partner violence among women,FWHR and FWHR-L were positively correlated with their dominance.There was a significant positive correlation between male’s BMI and psychological aggressive,physical aggressive and sexual coercion.The results of the experiment 1 further supported the relationship between FWHR and aggression in the field of intimate relationships.(2)FWHR and FWHR-L played different roles in facial perception.The effect of FWHR was masked by the effect of FWHR-L,which suggested that people with lower FWHR and FWHR-L were perceived as more masculine,more aggressive,being more likely to engage in intimate partner violence and infidelity behaviours.(3)Effects of face width,face height and face length on face perception were in different directions.Compared with face width,face height and length strongly affected the attribution of individuals’ perception of face characteristics.For face height and length independently,results showed that face length played a more significant role in social judgments.In particular,people with wider face were perceived to be more masculine and more likely to display intimate partner violence,as those with narrower face were considered to be more feminine,attractive and unfaithful.As for the face pictures received height manipulation,male with higher FWHR were perceived as high possibility to display intimate partner violence,while male with lower FWHR were considered more trustworthy and attractive.And female with lower FWHR were also perceived as more feminine,attractive and being more likely to show infidelity behaviour.As for the face pictures received length manipulation,male with higher FWHR-L were considered more feminine.On the contrary,lower FWHR-L were related to higher possibility to display intimate partner violence,infidelity and dominance behaviour.Overall,individual’s FWHR was closely associated with their intimate partner violence,primarily in men.And facial perception was strongly influenced by FWHR as well as FWHR-L.Compared with FWHR,FWHR-L played a more significant role in facial perception.Further,each components of FWHR and FWHR-L(face width,face height and face length)was useful to search differences in social perceptions,providing the perceiver with facial cues in different directions.