“Quem é bonito é bom”: interação entre estereótipos raciais e atratividade física facial em tarefas de julgamento moral

Abstract

The general objective of this work is to test the mutual influence of racial stereotypes and the degree of facial physical attractiveness in the performance of moral judgment tasks, in the presence of targets of different ethnic profiles and with increased or decreased degree of physical attractiveness. To this end, two studies were carried out. The first study aimed at building and validating a bank of prototypical images with different skin colors (black, brown and white) varying degrees of physical attractiveness (low, medium and high attractiveness), the images were extracted from the seminal study of (Mendes, Arrais & Fukushima, 2009). In the first study, 337 people participated, who answered an online questionnaire, produced from the Ef-survey digital platform and distributed from the social networks of the researcher and people close to her. The participants were asked to participate in an aesthetic judgment task and the skin color of the referred photographs. Based on the data produced, a database was created with 18 different images that present: (a) photographs with a high degree of facial physical attractiveness (AA); (b) photographs show a medium degree of physical attractiveness (AM) and; (c) photographs that have a low degree of physical attractiveness (AB). It is noteworthy that in all three groups there is a pair (male and female) of photographs of skin color, white, black and brown. Furthermore, the photographs selected according to the analyzes carried out showed no significant differences regarding the degree of physical attractiveness for the different groups, which indicates that these participants do not differ in the perception of the attractiveness of the referred photographs. The second study was an experimental study, with a randomized sample, which aimed to test the mutual influence of racial stereotypes and the degree of facial physical attractiveness in the performance of moral judgment tasks, in the presence of targets of different ethnic profiles and with a degree of increased or decreased physical attractiveness. 333 people answered an online, self-administered questionnaire, developed by the researcher using the Ef-survey digital platform. For the composition of the three Scenarios of Moral Dilemmas (of the Catwalk, of the Transplant and of the Lost Wallet), the three photographs evaluated in the previous study that presented a medium degree of physical attractiveness (AAM) and whose skin color was previously validated as brown were selected. After obtaining consent, the participant visualized the image that preceded the moral dilemma story and a short text containing the story attributed to/to the character, then she was invited to answer questions related to the moral decision-making attributed to the character (target) and about moral decision-making in relation to the dilemma. After processing the database, a series of multivariate analyzes (repeated measures, factorial and ANCOVAS ANOVA's) were performed to assess the impact of the presentation of the faces on the degree of moral judgment that the participants gave to themselves and to the target in question. . The first hypothesis was partially supported in the low-conflict moral dilemma setting, but was not supported in the high-conflict moral dilemma and impersonal dilemma setting. Just as the second hypothesis was not supported, as the ANOVA confirmed that there were no significant differences produced by the self-reported skin color and gender of our participants. With the exception of a trend observed in the interaction between gender and self-reported skin color in the scenario of the Transplantation moral dilemma. And in the scenario of the moral dilemma of the Lost Wallet, the ANOVA was not significant, although it had a marginal effect due to the interaction between sex and self-declared color by the participant. Still, the third and fourth hypotheses were not supported in any of the scenarios, since the results showed that the ethnic profile factors of the face together with a greater motivation to control prejudice were predictors of a greater evaluation of the moral conduct of the displayed target. These results are discussed in the light of theories of interpersonal attraction, moral judgment and intergroup relations.