Facial attractiveness: evolutionary based research Little, Anthony C.; Jones, Benedict C.; DeBruine, Lisa M.
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences,
06/2011, Letnik:
366, Številka:
1571
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Face preferences affect a diverse range of critical social outcomes, from mate choices and decisions about platonic relationships to hiring decisions and decisions about social exchange. Firstly, we ...review the facial characteristics that influence attractiveness judgements of faces (e.g. symmetry, sexually dimorphic shape cues, averageness, skin colour/texture and cues to personality) and then review several important sources of individual differences in face preferences (e.g. hormone levels and fertility, own attractiveness and personality, visual experience, familiarity and imprinting, social learning). The research relating to these issues highlights flexible, sophisticated systems that support and promote adaptive responses to faces that appear to function to maximize the benefits of both our mate choices and more general decisions about other types of social partners.
Sutherland and Young (Br. J. Psychol., 113, 2022, 1056) provide a comprehensive and timely overview of recent developments in research on social judgements of faces, emphasizing the utility of ...data‐driven approaches. Here, we expand on this theme, focusing on how data‐driven approaches can provide new insights into the physical characteristics in face images that best predict social judgements.
In person perception research, femininity and masculinity are regularly conceived as 2 ends of 1 bipolar dimension. This unidimensional understanding permeates work on facial impressions, gender ...diagnosticity, and perceptions of LGBTQ individuals, but it is perhaps most prominent in evolutionary work suggesting that sexually dimorphic facial features (which vary along a female-male continuum) correspond directly with subjective ratings of femininity and masculinity, which in turn predict ratings of traits such as attractiveness. In this paper, we analyze 2 large face databases (the Chicago and Bogazici Face Databases) to demonstrate that femininity and masculinity are distinct dimensions in person perception. We also evaluate key theoretical assumptions surrounding femininity and masculinity in evolutionary theories of face perception. We find that sexually dimorphic features weakly correlate with each other and typically explain just 10-20% of variance in subjective ratings of femininity and masculinity. Femininity and masculinity each explain unique variance in trait ratings of attractiveness, dominance, trustworthiness, and threat. Femininity and masculinity also interact to explain unique variance in these traits, revealing facial androgyny as a novel phenomenon. We propose a new theoretical model explaining the link between biology, facial features, perceived femininity and masculinity, and trait ratings. Our findings broadly suggest that concepts that are "opposites" semantically cannot necessarily be assumed to be psychological opposites.
Abstract First impressions formed from facial appearance predict important social outcomes. Existing models of these impressions indicate they are underpinned by dimensions of Valence and Dominance, ...and are typically derived by applying data reduction methods to explicit ratings of faces for a range of traits. However, this approach is potentially problematic because the trait ratings may not fully capture the dimensions on which people spontaneously assess faces. Here, we used natural language processing to extract ‘topics’ directly from participants' free‐text descriptions (i.e., their first impressions) of 2222 face images. Two topics emerged, reflecting first impressions related to positive emotional valence and warmth (Topic 1) and negative emotional valence and potential threat (Topic 2). Next, we investigated how these topics were related to Valence and Dominance components derived from explicit trait ratings. Collectively, these components explained only ~44% of the variance in the topics extracted from free‐text descriptions and suggested that first impressions are underpinned by correlated valence dimensions that subsume the content of existing trait‐rating‐based models. Natural language offers a promising new avenue for understanding social cognition, and future work can examine the predictive utility of natural language and traditional data‐driven models for impressions in varying social contexts.
Social judgments of faces are thought to be underpinned by two perceptual components: valence and dominance. Recent work using a standard key-press task to assess reward value found that these ...valence and dominance components were both positively related to the reward value of faces. Although bodies play an important role in human social interaction, the perceptual dimensions that underpin social judgments of bodies and their relationship to the reward value of bodies are not yet known. The current study investigated these issues. We replicated previous studies showing that valence and dominance underpin social judgments of faces and that both components are positively related to the reward value of faces. By contrast, social judgments of bodies were underpinned by a single component that reflected aspects of both perceived valence and perceived dominance and was positively correlated with the reward value of bodies. These results highlight differences in how observers process faces and bodies.
The dual mating strategy hypothesis proposes that women’s preferences for uncommitted sexual relationships with men displaying putative fitness cues increase during the high-fertility phase of the ...menstrual cycle. Results consistent with this hypothesis are widely cited as evidence that sexual selection has shaped human mating psychology. However, the methods used in most of these studies have recently been extensively criticized. Here we discuss (i) new empirical studies that address these methodological problems and largely report null results and (ii) an alternative model of hormonal regulation of women’s mating psychology that can better accommodate these new data.
The dual mating strategy hypothesis proposes that women’s preferences for uncommitted sexual relationships with men displaying putative fitness cues (e.g., masculinized faces) increase during the high-fertility phase of the menstrual cycle.
Although initial work provided support for this hypothesis, this work has subsequently been subjected to a variety of methodological criticisms, for example, the use of small sample sizes and between-subject designs.
Recent, large-scale studies with improved methods have not observed significant effects of fertility on women’s preferences for men displaying putative fitness cues.
Alterative accounts, such as the ‘estrous’ and ‘motivational priorities’ models are better able to accommodate these new data.
The dominant theory of facial attractiveness judgments is that they evolved to identify healthy individuals with strong immune systems. Here, we summarize results of recent tests of this hypothesis, ...concluding that it has little compelling empirical support. We then propose an alternative perspective that emphasizes the effects of lifestyle health.
Women's preferences for masculine characteristics in men's faces have been extensively studied. By contrast, little is known about how gay men respond to masculine facial characteristics. One area of ...disagreement in the emerging literature on this topic is the association between gay men's partnership status and masculinity preference. One study found that partnered gay men showed stronger preferences for masculine faces than did single gay men, while another study found that partnered gay men showed weaker preferences for masculine faces than did single gay men. We re-examined this issue in a sample of 618 gay men, finding no significant difference between partnered and single gay men's masculinity preferences. Together with the mixed previous findings, our null result suggests that the effect of partnership status on gay men's face preferences is not robust.
Many researchers have proposed that straight men prefer women's faces displaying feminine shape characteristics at least partly because mating with such women will produce healthier offspring. ...Although a prediction of this adaptation-for-mate-choice hypothesis is that straight men will show stronger preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of women's faces than will gay men, only one previous study has directly tested this prediction. Here we directly replicated that study by comparing 623 gay and 3163 straight men's preferences for feminized versus masculinized versions of faces. Consistent with the adaptation-for-mate-choice hypothesis of straight men's femininity preferences, we found that straight men showed significantly stronger preferences for feminized female faces than did gay men. Consistent with previous research suggesting that gay men place a premium on masculinity in potential romantic partners, we also found that gay men showed significantly stronger preferences for masculinized versions of male faces than did straight men. Together, these findings indicate the sexual orientation contributes to individual differences in men's face preferences.
PDF
