국제적인 관점에서 본 얼굴 차별

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This research is on a heavily under-researched form of media representation called face-ism. Face-ism is the phenomenon through which the media portray males in visual depictions as having higher facial prominence compared to females. Experiments have shown that higher facial prominence is associated with intelligence, attractiveness, and dominance. As a result, such representations have effects on perceptions of each gender.

We will conduct two studies that will enlarge the current knowledge of the field of face-ism, and gender representation in general, in multiple ways. The first study will be a content analysis of face-ism, and the second will be a study on face-ism effects from an international perspective. The content analysis will be one of the first studies to employ cross-cultural data for face-ism (from eight countries) as well as one of the first studies to research gender representations on the Internet. In addition, the content analysis will be the first study to employ self-representations from online dating sites, and the first study to relate the results to cultural dimensions related to gender, which will be Hofstede’s masculinity dimension and the Project GLOBE’s gender egalitarianism dimension, thus testing if cultural dimensions influence the face-ism index. The study on face-ism effects will also be a first. It will be the first study to measure the effects of face-ism cross-culturally (South Korea, Japan, United States) and will also be the first study to test the face-ism theory in a non-Western environment and thereby test its validity. Considering that previous research has revealed that different cultures perceive visual depictions in different ways, it is of major importance to study face-ism effects in a non-Western context.

In conclusion, based on the novelty of many parts of this study and the significance of the still understudied face-ism theory, the effects of this study are expected to be significant. These two studies have the potential to play an important role in the study of gender representations and to be published in major international journals.