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Introduction Military personnel (MPs) exposed to military and non-military stressors that lead to trauma have an increased risk of developing post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), such as heightened emotional reactions that attest to the disruption of emotional expression and regulation. A wealth of anecdotal evidence suggests that art therapy improves emotional self-efficacy in MPs with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Hines-Martin et al, 1993; Spiegel et al, 2006; Walker et al., 2017; Lobban et al., 2019). Our goal is to objectively assess how emotional regulation to negative stimuli improves after art therapy. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this preregistration are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government. The opinions contained herein represent the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views, opinions, or policies of the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc., or the National Endowment for the Arts. Mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations does not imply endorsement by the US Government. This material was created free of branding or market affiliations. Research questions Research on emotional processing has implicated the amygdala as important during processing of negative emotions such as fear and disgust (Costafreda et al., 2008; Stein et al., 2007; Forster et al., 2017; Hayes et al., 2011). For example, higher activity is found in the amygdala during fear response tasks in veterans with PTSD compared to controls without PTSD. (Shin et al., 2005; Sripada et al., 2012). However, other brain regions have also been implicated in emotion regulation. Min and colleagues (2022) assessed emotion regulation in a healthy sample based on the “affective dial hypothesis” that decreasing the intensity of emotions (emotional downregulation) increases activity and increasing the intensity of emotions (emotional upregulation) decreases activity, in affect-generating regions of the brain. By contrast, they found that emotional downregulation of negative images presented to their healthy participant sample was associated with decreased activity in the posterior insula (involved in autonomic regulation to environmental stimuli) and post-central gyrus (which contains the primary somatosensory cortex and is involved in proprioception). Furthermore, when studying large scale intrinsic brain networks such as the salience network (composed of the anterior insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex), the anterior part of the insula has been specifically found to be involved with the subjective experience of emotions while the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex has been associated with emotional responses to conflict monitoring (Min et al., 2022; Craig et al, 2009; Namkung et al., 2017; Bush & Posner, 2000; Ichikawa et al., 2011). Additionally, previous neuroimaging studies testing psychological pain states—such as sadness, grief, social exclusion, and pain empathy—reported an increase in neural activity in the insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and amygdala (Mee et al, 2006; Eisenberger, 2012). Since art therapy is anecdotally associated with improvements in emotional processing (Hines-Martin et al, 1993; Spiegel et al, 2006; Walker et al., 2017; Lobban et al., 2019), we want to investigate how a course of art therapy impacts the recruitment of these regions during emotional regulation. Thus, we pursue the following question: Does a course of art therapy change the engagement of brain regions associated with emotional regulation during emotional downregulation in MPs with PTSS?

Considerable research has shown the “Beauty-is-good” stereotype: more beautiful people are expected to have more favorable characteristics (Dion & Berscheid, 1972). Specifically, attractive individuals are perceived as more intelligent, trustworthy, competent, dominant, socially skilled, and receive greater rewards and lesser punishments than unattractive individuals (Dion et al., 1972; Eagly at al., 1991; Ferrari et al., 2017; Gunnell & Ceci, 2010; Langlois et al., 2000; Wilson & Eckel, 2006; Zebrowitz et al, 2002). Growing evidence suggests that, in complement to beauty is good, ugly is also bad. Ugliness judgments are linked to the behavioral immune system and respond to pathogen cues, associated with disgust (Klebl et al., 2020; Workman et al., submitted). Moreover, researchers identified the “Anomalous-is-bad” stereotype affects attitudes, behavior, and brain (Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., submitted). Regarding attitudes and beliefs, both explicit and implicit biases against people with facial anomalies have been reported (Bilici et al., in prep; Hartung et al., 2019; Workman et al., submitted). Further, anomalous faces elicited neural responses in regions that are sensitive to disgust and unattractiveness (Workman et al., submitted). These findings suggest facial attractiveness (beauty and ugliness) affects judgments of personality and character traits, and this effect also manifests in behavior and brain. Here, we test the reverse possibility that moral information may also influence perceived facial beauty. Several studies have demonstrated that people’s personality characteristics (e.g., ability, honesty) affect perceived physical attractiveness (Gross & Crofton 1977; Felson & Bohrnstedt, 1979; Little et al., 2006; Paunonen, 2006). The present study extends this work by examining whether perceived moral cues, both pro- and anti-social, influence perceptions of facial beauty. We also examine whether this effect, if detected, varies by face age.

Complementary to the “beauty-is-good” stereotype (Dion et al., 1972), emerging evidence indicates that an “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype negatively biases attitudes towards people with craniofacial anomalies like scars (Hartung et al., 2019; Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2020). These negative biases have been detected in attitudes represented both explicitly and implicitly. Explicit biases manifest in harsher character inferences about individual people with anomalous relative to typical faces (Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2020) and in negative beliefs about people with facial anomalies as an overall group (Workman et al., 2020). These studies used real photographs of people with and without facial anomalies (Workman & Chatterjee, 2020). As a consequence, the facial anomalies were heterogenous in both etiology and presentation, affording ecological validity but at the expense of experimental control. Attitudes and behaviors towards people with facial anomalies, for instance, reportedly depend on the characteristics of the anomalies themselves. Worse social penalties were reportedly suffered by people with large anomalies closest to the center of the face than by people with small anomalies situated at the periphery (Dey et al., 2015). It is unclear, however, whether and how the features of facial anomalies influence attitudinal manifestations of the anomalous-is-bad stereotype. This project aims to establish whether the strength of the anomalous-is-bad stereotype depends on the location and orientation of facial anomalies themselves. To this end, stimuli selected from the Chicago Face Database will be modified to systematically vary the presence (scar and no scar), location (anatomic subunit: forehead, undereye, cheek, and upper lip; within-subunit: middle and border) and orientation (parallel or perpendicular to facial tension lines) of superimposed scars (Ma et al., 2015). In an online survey, administered using procedures described previously (Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2020), participants will make character inferences about each face, which they will see only once either with or without (N = 50 total non-scarred images, 25 female) a scar superimposed at a randomly selected location and orientation (N = 14 images per face; N = 700 total scarred images; N = 750 total images). Linear mixed effects models (LMEM) and linear discriminate analyses (LDA) performed in RStudio will test the hypotheses detailed below. After rating each face, participants will complete two attitudinal measures. The Explicit Bias Questionnaire (EBQ) will measure explicit endorsements of bias directed against people with facial anomalies as a group (Hartung et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2020). In view of evidence that individual differences in disgust sensitivity (Shanmugarajah et al., 2012) and facets of empathy (Bilici et al., 2020; Workman et al., 2020) bear on the anomalous-is-bad stereotype, self-report scales for dispositional disgust and empathy will also be acquired. These attitudinal and dispositional measures will be submitted to exploratory analyses to examine relations between these individual differences measures and character inferences about people with and without facial anomalies. References Bilici, N., Workman, C. I., Humphries, S., Hamilton, R., & Chatterjee, A. (2020, May). Normalizing Anomalies with Mobile Exposure (NAME): A novel intervention for reducing implicit biases against people with facial anomalies. 27th Annual Meeting of Cogntivie Neuroscience Society. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E6Xy_8Zr_O0wIAIrp2xPqq6bAsrqs3-U Buhrmester, M. D., Talaifar, S., & Gosling, S. D. (2018). An Evaluation of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Its Rapid Rise, and Its Effective Use. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 149–154. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617706516 Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113 DeBruine, L., & Jones, B. C. (2018). Determining the number of raters for reliable mean ratings (August 11). https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/X7FUS Dey, J. K., Ishii, L. E., Byrne, P. J., Boahene, K. D. O., & Ishii, M. (2015). The Social Penalty of Facial Lesions: New Evidence Supporting High-Quality Reconstruction. JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, 17(2), 90–96. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamafacial.2014.1131 Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24(3), 285–290. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0033731 Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A., & Lang, A.-G. (2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 3.1: Tests for correlation and regression analyses. Behavior Research Methods, 41(4), 1149–1160. https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149 Hartung, F., Jamrozik, A., Rosen, M. E., Aguirre, G., Sarwer, D. B., & Chatterjee, A. (2019). Behavioural and Neural Responses to Facial Disfigurement. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 8021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44408-8 Jamrozik, A., Oraa Ali, M., Sarwer, D. B., & Chatterjee, A. (2019). More than skin deep: Judgments of individuals with facial disfigurement. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 13(1), 117–129. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000147 Lakens, D. (2013). Calculating and reporting effect sizes to facilitate cumulative science: a practical primer for t-tests and ANOVAs. Frontiers in Psychology, 4(NOV), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00863 Lucas, T., Zhdanova, L., & Alexander, S. (2011). Procedural and Distributive Justice Beliefs for Self and Others. Journal of Individual Differences, 32(1), 14–25. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000032 Ma, D. S., Correll, J., & Wittenbrink, B. (2015). The Chicago face database: A free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), 1122–1135. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0532-5 Shanmugarajah, K., Gaind, S., Clarke, A., & Butler, P. E. M. (2012). The role of disgust emotions in the observer response to facial disfigurement. Body Image, 9(4), 455–461. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2012.05.003 Stolier, R. M., Hehman, E., & Freeman, J. B. (2018). A Dynamic Structure of Social Trait Space. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(3), 197–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2017.12.003 Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 103–122. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015474 Workman, C. I., & Chatterjee, A. (2020). The Face Image Meta-Database (fIMDb) & ChatLab Facial Anomaly Database (CFAD): Tools for research on face perception and social stigma. PsyArXiv Preprints, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/54utr Workman, C. I., Humphries, S., Hartung, F., Aguirre, G. K., Kable, J. W., & Chatterjee, A. (2020). Morality is in the eye of the beholder: The neurocognitive basis of the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype. PsyArXiv Preprints, 1–30.

Physical appearance affects people’s inferences about moral character (and vice versa). Attractive people are assumed to have more desirable traits and lead better lives (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972). Such findings have led to a “beauty is good” stereotype where beautiful people are endowed with benevolent qualities such as being a morally good person (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991). A complementary effect also appears to work in reverse, with positive character inferences linked to higher beauty ratings (Gross & Crofton, 1977; Konrath & Handy, 2020). More recent research has turned this stereotype on its head, positing that “ugly” and/or “anomalous” are “bad” (Workman, Humphries, Hartung, Aguirre, Kable, & Chatterjee, 2020). Facial anomalies such as scars, for example, affect trustworthiness judgments and facets of moral behavior (Workman et al., 2020). Furthermore, ugly faces may alert us to harmful risks, promoting the avoidance of potential threats (Klebl, Greenaway, Rhee, & Bastian, 2020). Neuroaesthetics research has examined whether judgments of facial and moral beauty share neural substrates. Functional convergence was detected in several brain areas (e.g., medial prefrontal cortex; Luo, Yu, Li, & Mo, 2019). Moral beauty—in contrast to aesthetic beauty—engaged a more spatially distributed network of brain areas (Avram et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2015). This spatial difference between functional networks may reveal a functional difference in the processing required to evaluate moral relative to aesthetic information, or in how such evaluations are ultimately prioritized for allocations of neurocognitive resources. This view raises the possibility that complex moral judgment may be capable of biasing or even overriding aesthetic judgments (May, Workman, Haas, & Han, 2020; Moll, Oliveira-Souza, Zahn, 2008). The proposed research aims to determine if this conflation of values generalizes to artwork—does an artist’s moral character affect aesthetic judgments of their artwork? Such a generalization would suggest that evolutionary arguments for the beauty and good conflation that rest on physical features as signaling health quality, would need to be extended to incorporate a broader mechanism of value conflation. We will test the hypothesis that aesthetic judgments of artworks (i.e., beautiful or ugly) are influenced by viewers’ impression of the artists’ moral reputations (i.e., good or bad).

Recent evidence suggests people experience biases against those with facial anomalies. Although biasing effects have been reported in the literature for both explicit and implicit attitudes, implicit biases have been shown to be particularly robust. The effects of such biases on behavior, however, are poorly understood. It is unknown, for instance, whether implicit bias modulates visual attention paid to facial anomalies and, if observed, whether such effects are attenuated following surgical correction. Furthermore, psychological dispositions like empathy and disgust sensitivity have been hypothesized to shape bias, although additional empirical work is necessary to test these hypotheses.

People make reflexive judgments about others upon seeing them that are informed by stereotypes. The stereotype content model proposes two fundamental axes along which people organize such stereotypes (Fiske, 2018): warmth (does this person have good or bad intentions?) and competence (if they have bad intentions, are they capable of acting on them?). Diminished warmth and/or competence are hypothesized to trigger “dehumanization,” which refers to “perceiving a person or group as lacking humanness” (Fiske, 2018; Haslam & Loughnan, 2014). Competing mechanistic accounts have been proposed for how dehumanization ultimately leads to denials of “humanness” (Over, 2020). Haslam and Loughnan (2014) propose two routes. The first route entails likening dehumanized others to animals (i.e., animalistic dehumanization) by denying them capacities such as morality and self-control/intelligence. The second route entails likening dehumanized others to inanimate objects (i.e., mechanistic dehumanization) by denying them capacities for emotion and warmth. A well-established “beauty-is-good” stereotype colors people’s perceptions of others on the basis of their attractiveness, with more attractive people being perceived as warmer and more competent (Dion et al., 1972; Eagly et al., 1991). A complementary “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype has also been hypothesized, where the presence of visible facial differences—like scars—facilitates the dehumanization of people whose faces harbor those differences (Hartung et al., 2019; Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2021, 2022). The available evidence suggests—consistent with the “anomalous-is-bad” hypothesis—that faces with visible differences are subjected to animalistic dehumanization (Workman et al., 2021). Whether faces with visible differences also trigger mechanistic dehumanization, however, remains to be seen. Furthermore, several studies find evidence for the negative consequences of visible differences on perceptions of warmth (Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2021, 2022). Evidence for a negative effect of visible differences on perceptions of competence, however, is mixed. Jamrozik and colleagues (2019), for instance, find that ratings along dimensions of competence are affected negatively by the presence of uncorrected facial anomalies. A principal components analysis conducted on the same ratings, however, yielded a significant component corresponding to warmth but a component corresponding to competence failed to reach significance. Furthermore, Workman and colleagues (2022) find evidence among members of the Hadza hunter-gatherer tribe in Northern Tanzania for a positive effect of facial anomalies—specifically, scars—on perceptions of competence. Previous studies of the anomalous-is-bad stereotype were not, by and large, explicitly designed to assess different routes to dehumanization (i.e., animalistic and/or mechansitic; e.g., Workman et al., 2021), nor were they designed to assess dimensions of warmth and competence exhaustively (cf. Workman et al., 2022). Prior research suggests people with facial differences are subjected to animalistic dehumanization (Workman et al., 2021) but cannot speak to whether they also trigger mechanistic dehumanization. Furthermore, mixed evidence regarding the effect of visible differences on perceptions of competence may reflect a failure to capture the right features of competence. Finally, in most previous studies, participants rated their faces with an array of heterogeneous visible differences (Jamrozik et al., 2019; Workman et al., 2021). The consequences of visible differences for dehumanization (animalistic and/or mechanistic) and for perceptions of warmth and competence may depend on the specific anomaly a given face harbors. This study will use a more comprehensive approach to assessing dehumanization (animalistic and mechanistic), warmth, and competence than earlier studies of the anomalous-is-bad stereotype (Jenkins et al., 2018). It will also focus on characterizing dehumanization (animalistic and mechanistic), warmth, and competence exclusively for faces with palsies and scars.

Can exposure to people with facial anomalies reduce implicit biases towards them? Recent evidence suggests that exposure to information about others can serve to humanize them (Majdandžić et al., 2012). This study will test the hypothesis that implicit biases towards people with facial differences can be reduced through routine exposure to people with facial anomalies. Specifically, we predict that exposure to people with facial anomalies relative to a set of control faces will lead to a reduction in implicit bias scores acquired before and after completing the exposure intervention. This work will answer questions about the malleability of implicit biases related to a particular population.

Are people with flawed faces regarded as having flawed moral characters? An “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype is hypothesized to facilitate biases towards people with facial anomalies (e.g., scars), although whether and how these biases affect behavior and brain functioning remain open questions. We replicated previously reported negative character evaluations made about individuals with facial anomalies, and further identified explicit biases directed against them as a group. People with anomalous faces were subjected to less prosociality from those participants highest in socioeconomic status. In amygdala, selective neural responding to anomalous faces—sensitive to beauty and disgust, but not explained by salience or arousal—correlated with stronger just world beliefs (i.e., people get what they deserve), less dispositional empathic concern, and less prosociality towards people with facial anomalies. Characterizing the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype across and between levels of organization—i.e., attitudes, behavior, and brain–can reveal underappreciated psychological burdens shouldered by people who look different.

This study aims to validate and norm a taxonomy for describing the impact of visual artworks (paintings) on aesthetic experience. The taxonomy comprises 11 fundamental terms or “art impacts”, previously curated by a multidisciplinary team and uncovered by network analysis, including “challenged”, “confusion”, “disgust”, “hopeful/uplift”, “intimacy”, “upset”, “compassionate”, “consoled”, “enlightened”, “humble”, and “swept away”. Our focus will be on identifying artworks that exhibit high and low characteristics on these art impacts, in effort to establish a normed stimulus set. This will be the first step towards empirically investigating aesthetic cognitivism, or how specific contexts and impacts of art promote knowledge and understanding across people.