Previous research reveals that a more 'African' appearance has significant social consequences, yielding more negative first impressions and harsher criminal sentencing of Black or White individuals. This study is the first to systematically assess the relative contribution of skin tone and facial metrics to White, Black, and Korean perceivers' ratings of the racial prototypicality of faces from the same three groups. Our results revealed that the relative contribution of metrics and skin tone depended on both perceiver race and face race. White perceivers' racial prototypicality ratings were less responsive to variations in skin tone than were Black or Korean perceivers' ratings. White perceivers ratings' also were more responsive to facial metrics than to skin tone, while the reverse was true for Black perceivers. Additionally, across all perceiver groups, skin tone had a more consistent impact than metrics on racial prototypicality ratings of White faces, with the reverse for Korean faces. For Black faces, the relative impact varied with perceiver race: skin tone had a more consistent impact than metrics for Black and Korean perceivers, with the reverse for White perceivers. These results have significant implications for predicting who will experience racial prototypicality biases and from whom.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 16. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 June 2026.
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#2,986,118
of 34,364,397 outputs
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#32,094
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Outputs of similar age
#16,870
of 213,278 outputs
Outputs of similar age from PLOS ONE
#512
of 4,322 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,364,397 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 91st percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 224,528 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 17.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 213,278 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 4,322 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.
