Social Psychology Commons^™

Crowd Salience Heightens Tolerance To Healthy Facial Features, Mitch Brown, Ryan E. Tracy, Steven G. Young, Donald F. Sacco

Publications and Research

Objective: Recent findings suggest crowd salience heightens pathogen-avoidant motives, serving to reduce individuals’ infection risk through interpersonal contact. Such experiences may similarly facilitate the identification, and avoidance, of diseased conspecifics. The current experiment sought to replicate and extend previous crowding research.

Methods: In this experiment, we primed participants at two universities with either a crowding or control experience before having them evaluate faces manipulated to appear healthy or diseased by indicating the degree to which they would want to interact with them.

Results: Crowding-primed participants reported a more heightened preferences for healthy faces than control-primed participants. Additionally, crowd salience reduced …