What is Face-ism?
The phenomenon of face-ism is characterized by two aspects:
A greater number of close-up shots, in comparison to distance shots--such as whole figures--that can be found in the media, for certain categories (e. g., men vs. women, white vs. black persons);
The attribution of positive qualities such as attractive- ness, ambitiousness, or dominance to people photo- graphed in close shots such as portraits instead of whole figure.
(Costa & Ricci Bitti, 2000)
Previous researches (i.e. Archer et al. 1983) demonstrated that subjects represented in photographed up close are rated as more intelligent, ambitious, and attractive, in comparison to those pictured in more distan shots.
It's really interesting to think why people prefer close up pictures.
In everyday life, individuals interact with liked others in closer spatial proximity than with disliked others[...]. Closer spatial proximity, however, is associated with a visual orientation that excludes large parts of the body, focusing attention on the face.
Costa and Ricci Bitti in their research 'Face-ism effect and head canting in one's own and other's photographs' (2000), demonstrated that:
[...] the face-ism effect is relevant only in the evaluation of other's photographs, while with one's own pictures the trend is reversed, with a positive evaluation of distant shots such as whole figure instead of portrait.
These findings support their hypothesis:
[...] if subjects have to rate their own photographs, their preference will go to more distant shots, for the following reasons:
In a medium distance shot, body details and imperfections are less evident (taking into account that the one's own body image is often hypercritical).
A close shot could be interpreted as a violation of personal space according to proxemic laws [...], like the dimensional representations of various social distances.
This post was inspired by sartorialscientist's suggestion.