Creating a Sincere Look: Face Ratios of Brand Mascots Affect Social Categorisation and Trust

摘要

Although humanised entities with recognisable faces such as brand mascots (e. g., Mr. Peanut, the Nesquik Bunny) are omnipresent in the marketplace, their facial characteristics have not received much attention in the marketing literature. We investigate the role of facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR: bizygomatic width divided by upper-face height) for the perception of humanised entities such as mascots. Building on evolutionary research on face perception and stereotyping, the present research suggests that humanised entities with a lower fWHR (i. e., a narrower face), compared to humanised entities with a higher fWHR (i. e., a wider face), receive more trust from perceivers. This effect occurs because humanised entities with narrower faces are perceived as warmer than those with wider faces. The effect does not occur when the entity is feminised. We present two experiments and a correlational study.