Hoback, A. S., & Greene, H. H.
Gender differences in pareidolia and anger perception of vehicle front ends
Two original studies about pareidolia and anger perception are compared. The first study was a survey about seeing faces in the styling of the front-end of vehicles in production. The second study was a simulation about the perception of anger in graphics of possible car styles. Attributes of the vehicle designs that could be seen as anthropomorphically angry were related to survey responses. The level of automobile features were correlated to the participant responses by gender. Men and women generally used the same features such as the lights which might represent the eyes of a face, and air intakes which might represent the mouth of a face. However, there were statistically significant differences in how men and women favored different features when interpreting a car’s so-called “angry expression.†The results suggest that different visual processes may be used by men and women when interpreting anger in inanimate objects.
Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 2021, Vol. 28, pp. 207-220, DOI: 10.4473/TPM28.2.4
