The male bias and biological motion : a role for scene complexity?

Jacalyn Hall

doi:10.25918/thesis.64

The ability of observers to extract and process social information from visual representations of other people is well documented, this includes biological sex judgements (e.g., Brooks, Gaetano & van der Zwan, 2011; Cheng, O’Toole & Abdi, 2001; Thompson & Bentler, 1971). Interestingly, it has been reported that when a target is perceptually sex-ambiguous or facing-the-viewer observers are more likely to respond male than female, a phenomenon known as the male bias (Armann & Bülthoff, 2012; Lick, Johnson & Gill, 2013; Johnson, Iida & Tassinary, 2012; Troje et al., 2006; Troje & Szabo, 2006). The thesis here utilised novel methodologies and techniques to advance the working theories surrounding the male bias. The first approach was an exploration of distractor stimuli: using the Flanker-Interference Paradigm to investigate sex judgements from Point-Light Walker (PLWs; Johansson, 1973) stimuli. Observers were asked to identify the sex (male or female) of a central PLW across three conditions: baseline (target PLW presented alone, either male or female), congruent (a central target with adjacent same sex flankers, e.g., a male central target with male flankers), and incongruent (the flankers were the opposite sex to the target, e.g., a female central target with male flankers). The effect of the flankers was relative to the sex of the central target: compared to the target only condition, flankers facilitated judgements (on accuracy and RT) of male targets but hindered identification of female targets. Signal detection was then utilised within the parameters of the Flanker-Interference Paradigm to investigate whether bias or sensitivity drove the aforementioned observation. Findings revealed that observers were equally sensitive to male and female targets, although demonstrated a male bias when the target was flanked. These findings support the theory that observers are biased in their judgements toward male responses. Additional experiments showed that observers were faster to identify single unambiguous female targets than male. However, when sex cues were minimised observers were faster to identify male targets. Overall, these observations tell an interesting story: Observers appear to be better at judging single female targets than male targets. This could suggest that observers have a template of human motion that is female, and targets/conditions outside that criterion (Gaetano et al., 2014) is judged as the other option, which in most sex perception tasks, is male. Therefore, the male bias phenomenon may be the result of that female criterion and not evolutionary underpinnings, commonly referred to as threat bias.

The male bias and biological motion : a role for scene complexity?

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The male bias and biological motion : a role for scene complexity?

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