Gender-specific aftereffects following adaptation to silhouettes of human bodies

Abstract

We used silhouettes of headless human bodies, devoid of primary sexual characteristics but possessing enough morphological information to visually convey the sexual phenotype, as stimuli of a visual adaptation paradigm. The results show that prolonged adaptation to a distinctively male or female body induces a gender-specific contrast aftereffect on the subsequent perception of a neutral (androgynous) body (i.e., after exposure to a female body, the androgynous body appears as more male). This is the first demonstration that adaptation occurs for the sexually dimorphic global shape of the human body, thus proving that bodily gender can be listed as a dimension sensitive to visual adaptation, similarly to faces. Intriguingly, the contrast aftereffects measured were much stronger following exposure to adapters of the same gender as the observers', possibly suggesting a role of perceptual experience favouring mate selection and pair bonding.

Keywords:

• Adaptation
• Aftereffects
• Body perception
• Gender
• Silhouette