Women’s faces with cosmetics are perceived as more dominant, but less trustworthy and competent.

Cosmetic (make-up) use is a popular way to augment facial appearance, particularly in women. As such, we could expect that cosmetics would influence social evaluations made from faces. Here, we test whether make-up influences perceptions of warmth, competence, trustworthiness, and dominance. In an online study, 293 participants rated 80 facial images that included the same women with and without make-up on one of the four traits. As predicted, facial cosmetics was associated with lower trustworthiness and higher dominance judgments. However, contrary to predictions, facial cosmetics was also associated with lower perceived competence. There was no evidence for an effect on perceived warmth. In addition, exploratory analyses found no evidence that perceiver sex moderated any effects of cosmetics on social evaluations, and that effects of cosmetics are relatively small compared to variance attributed to face identity. We conclude that cosmetics can influence social perceptions, though context is likely important.