Adolescents’ preferences for sexual dimorphism are influenced by relative exposure to male and female faces

Environmental convergence in facial preferences: a cross-group comparison of Asian Vietnamese, Czech Vietnamese, and Czechs

It has been demonstrated that sociocultural environment has a significant impact on human behavior. This contribution focuses on differences in the perception of attractiveness of European (Czech) faces as rated by Czechs of European origin, Vietnamese persons living in the Czech Republic and Vietnamese who permanently reside in Vietnam. We investigated whether attractiveness judgments and preferences for facial sex-typicality and averageness in Vietnamese who grew up and live in the Czech Republic are closer to the judgements and preferences of Czech Europeans or to those of Vietnamese born and residing in Vietnam. We examined the relative contribution of sexual shape dimorphism and averageness to the perception of facial attractiveness across all three groups of raters. Czech Europeans, Czech Vietnamese, and Asian Vietnamese raters of both sexes rated facial portraits of 100 Czech European participants (50 women and 50 men, standardized, non-manipulated) for attractiveness. Taking Czech European ratings as a standard for Czech facial attractiveness, we showed that Czech Vietnamese assessments of attractiveness were closer to this standard than assessments by the Asian Vietnamese. Among all groups of raters, facial averageness positively correlated with perceived attractiveness, which is consistent with the "average is attractive" hypothesis. A marginal impact of sexual shape dimorphism on attractiveness rating was found only in Czech European male raters: neither Czech Vietnamese nor Asian Vietnamese raters of either sex utilized traits associated with sexual shape dimorphism as a cue of attractiveness. We thus conclude that Vietnamese people permanently living in the Czech Republic converge with Czechs of Czech origin in perceptions of facial attractiveness and that this population adopted some but not all Czech standards of beauty.

Face Preference in Infants at Six and Nine Months Old: The Effects of Facial Attractiveness and Observation Experience

Attractiveness is perceived based on both facial physical features and prior experience for adults. Infants also prefer attractive or familiar faces, but it is unclear whether facial physical features and prior experience affect their preference. In this study, we investigated whether infants’ preference for faces was shaped by both facial physical features and facial looking experience. This experiment comprised two tasks, observation and preference looking. We manipulated fixation durations in the first task (observation experience) to differ between presented faces and measured the preference for faces in the second task right after the observation task. We conducted two experiments: the same faces in the same positions through both tasks in Experiment 1, and the same faces in different positions in Experiment 2, and analyzed the interaction between observation experience and attractiveness of face images in terms of preference. Observation experience and facial attractiveness only affected preference in Experiment 2: Infants generally looked longer at the flickered position but different face, but looked for the attractive face when the face in the flickered position changed from attractive to unattractive. We suggest that observation experience arouses spatial attention, and that facial attractiveness attracts infants’ attention only when they notice changes of faces.

Biological Bases of Beauty Revisited: The Effect of Symmetry, Averageness, and Sexual Dimorphism on Female Facial Attractiveness

The factors influencing human female facial attractiveness—symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism—have been extensively studied. However, recent studies, using improved methodologies, have called into question their evolutionary utility and links with life history. The current studies use a range of approaches to quantify how important these factors actually are in perceiving attractiveness, through the use of novel statistical analyses and by addressing methodological weaknesses in the literature. Study One examines how manipulations of symmetry, averageness, femininity, and masculinity affect attractiveness using a two-alternative forced choice task, finding that increased masculinity and also femininity decrease attractiveness, compared to unmanipulated faces. Symmetry and averageness yielded a small and large effect, respectively. Study Two utilises a naturalistic ratings paradigm, finding similar effects of averageness and masculinity as Study One but no effects of symmetry and femininity on attractiveness. Study Three applies geometric face measurements of the factors and a random forest machine learning algorithm to predict perceived attractiveness, finding that shape averageness, dimorphism, and skin texture symmetry are useful features capable of relatively accurate predictions, while shape symmetry is uninformative. However, the factors do not explain as much variance in attractiveness as the literature suggests. The implications for future research on attractiveness are discussed.

Familiarity with Own Population's Appearance Influences Facial Preferences

Previous studies have found that individuals from rural areas in Malaysia and in El Salvador prefer heavier women than individuals from urban areas. Several explanations have been proposed to explain these differences in weight preferences but no study has explored familiarity as a possible explanation. We therefore sought to investigate participants' face preferences while also examining the facial characteristics of the actual participants. Our results showed that participants from rural areas preferred heavier-looking female faces than participants from urban areas. We also found that the female faces from the rural areas were rated as looking heavier than the female faces from the urban areas. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that familiarity may be contributing to the differences found in face preferences between rural and urban areas given that people from rural and urban areas are exposed to different faces.

Imprinting and flexibility in human face cognition

Faces are an important cue to multiple physiological and psychological traits. Human preferences for exaggerated sex typicality (masculinity or femininity) in faces depend on multiple factors and show high inter-subject variability. To gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying facial femininity preferences in men, we tested the interactive effect of family structure (birth order, sibling sex-ratio and number of siblings) and parenthood status on these preferences. Based on a group of 1304 heterosexual men, we have found that preference for feminine faces was not only influenced by sibling age and sex, but also that fatherhood modulated this preference. Men with sisters had a weaker preference for femininity than men with brothers, highlighting a possible effect of a negative imprinting-like mechanism. What is more, fatherhood increased strongly the preference for facial femininity. Finally, for fathers with younger sisters only, the more the age difference increased between them, the more femininity preference increased. Overall our findings bring new insight into how early-acquired experience at the individual level may determine face preference in adulthood, and what is more, how these preferences are flexible and potentially dependent on parenthood status in adult men.

Early Menarche is Associated With Preference for Masculine Male Faces and Younger Preferred Age to Have a First Child

One developmental factor that is associated with variation in reproductive strategy is pubertal timing. For instance, women who experience earlier menarche have their first pregnancy earlier and prefer more masculinized male voices. Early menarche may also lead to preferences for masculine faces, but no study has shown such a link. We therefore investigated the relationships between pubertal timing, reproductive plans, sexual attitudes and behaviors, and masculinity preferences in nulliparous women aged 18–30 from the United Kingdom ( N = 10,793). We found that women who experienced earlier menarche reported a younger preferred age to have a first child and showed stronger masculinity preferences. This provides evidence that women experiencing early menarche not only have children earlier but notably plan to have children earlier. Additionally, our findings provide evidence that age of menarche influences partner selection, which is instrumental for the implementation of reproductive strategies.

Is beauty in the face of the beholder?

Opposing forces influence assortative mating so that one seeks a similar mate while at the same time avoiding inbreeding with close relatives. Thus, mate choice may be a balancing of phenotypic similarity and dissimilarity between partners. In the present study, we assessed the role of resemblance to Self's facial traits in judgments of physical attractiveness. Participants chose the most attractive face image of their romantic partner among several variants, where the faces were morphed so as to include only 22% of another face. Participants distinctly preferred a "Self-based morph" (i.e., their partner's face with a small amount of Self's face blended into it) to other morphed images. The Self-based morph was also preferred to the morph of their partner's face blended with the partner's same-sex "prototype", although the latter face was ("objectively") judged more attractive by other individuals. When ranking morphs differing in level of amalgamation (i.e., 11% vs. 22% vs. 33%) of another face, the 22% was chosen consistently as the preferred morph and, in particular, when Self was blended in the partner's face. A forced-choice signal-detection paradigm showed that the effect of self-resemblance operated at an unconscious level, since the same participants were unable to detect the presence of their own faces in the above morphs. We concluded that individuals, if given the opportunity, seek to promote "positive assortment" for Self's phenotype, especially when the level of similarity approaches an optimal point that is similar to Self without causing a conscious acknowledgment of the similarity.

Preferences for facial and vocal masculinity in homosexual men: the role of relationship status, sexual restrictiveness, and self-perceived masculinity

Studies on mate preferences usually examine heterosexual attraction; comparatively little is known about preferences of individuals whose sexuality is aimed at the same sex. We examined preferences of two groups of androphilic individuals--homosexual men and heterosexual women--for male facial and vocal level of masculinity. Facial images of 58 men and vocal recordings of 30 men were rated by 51 heterosexual women and 33 homosexual men for their attractiveness and masculinity--femininity. In both groups of raters, ratings of vocal attractiveness and masculinity were positively correlated, but there was no overall preference for facial masculinity. After splitting raters according to their relationship status, sexual restrictiveness, and self-rated masculinity, we found significant preferences for masculine voices only in single homosexual men and coupled heterosexual women, while a preference for feminine male faces was found in coupled homosexual men. Furthermore, homosexual men describing themselves as relatively masculine significantly preferred masculine voices but also more feminine male faces. Our results demonstrate that conditional mate preferences are not restricted to heterosexual interactions, and homosexual men prefer a mixture of masculine and feminine traits in their potential male partners.

Repeated short presentations of morphed facial expressions change recognition and evaluation of facial expressions

This study investigated whether sensitivity to and evaluation of facial expressions varied with repeated exposure to non-prototypical facial expressions for a short presentation time. A morphed facial expression was presented for 500 ms repeatedly, and participants were required to indicate whether each facial expression was happy or angry. We manipulated the distribution of presentations of the morphed facial expressions for each facial stimulus. Some of the individuals depicted in the facial stimuli expressed anger frequently (i.e., anger-prone individuals), while the others expressed happiness frequently (i.e., happiness-prone individuals). After being exposed to the faces of anger-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals' angry faces. Further, after being exposed to the faces of happiness-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals' happy faces. We also found a relative increase in the social desirability of happiness-prone individuals after exposure to the facial stimuli.

Life history of female preferences for male faces: a comparison of pubescent girls, nonpregnant and pregnant young women, and middle-aged women

Although scientific interest in facial attractiveness has developed substantially in recent years, few studies have contributed to our understanding of the ontogeny of facial preferences. In this study, attractiveness of 30 male faces was evaluated by four female groups: girls at puberty, nonpregnant and pregnant young women, and middle-aged women. The main findings are as follows: (1) Preference for sexy-looking faces was strongest in young, nonpregnant women. (2) Biologically more mature girls displayed more adultlike preferences. (3) The intragroup consistency for postmenopausal women was relatively low. (4) In terms of the preference pattern, pregnant women were more similar to perimenopausal women than they were to their nonpregnant peers. (5) Preference for youthful appearance decreased with the age of the women. I argue that the life history of female preferences for male faces is, to a large extent, hormone-driven and underpinned by a set of evolutionary adaptations.

Visual adaptation and face perception

The appearance of faces can be strongly affected by the characteristics of faces viewed previously. These perceptual after-effects reflect processes of sensory adaptation that are found throughout the visual system, but which have been considered only relatively recently in the context of higher level perceptual judgements. In this review, we explore the consequences of adaptation for human face perception, and the implications of adaptation for understanding the neural-coding schemes underlying the visual representation of faces. The properties of face after-effects suggest that they, in part, reflect response changes at high and possibly face-specific levels of visual processing. Yet, the form of the after-effects and the norm-based codes that they point to show many parallels with the adaptations and functional organization that are thought to underlie the encoding of perceptual attributes like colour. The nature and basis for human colour vision have been studied extensively, and we draw on ideas and principles that have been developed to account for norms and normalization in colour vision to consider potential similarities and differences in the representation and adaptation of faces.

The pattern of facial preferences in boys at early adolescence

Despite numerous studies on perception of facial attractiveness in adults, preferences in adolescents remain poorly characterized. The aim of present study was to explore facial preferences in boys at early adolescence (11-13 years old) and compare them with preferences of men. All males evaluated the same 30 female faces, which were also assessed by independent judges for several perceived features. Regardless of age, boys assessed attractiveness much the same as men, and the strengths of their preferences for specific facial features were similar to those of men. The pubertal maturity (calculated on the basis of the presence of pubic hair at two sessions spaced ten months apart) correlated positively with strength of preference for several facial features (specifically: maturity, sexiness, marital appearance and friendly appearance). This remained true even after controlling for age and psychosexual development, suggesting that sex hormones are involved in the development of facial preferences in pubescent boys.

Current status and future directions of research on facial attractiveness

The aim of the present paper was to evaluate the current state of knowledge on the perception of facial attractiveness and to assess the opportunity for research on poorly explored issues regarding facial preferences. A theoretical framework of research problems was proposed, within which the current state of knowledge on each topic was estimated. The analysis proved that a disproportional amount of research concerned several topics, while many other topics were addressed by few studies, the results of which being sometimes contradictory. Next, possible obstacles to more comprehensive research are discussed. This leads to the conclusion that the obstacles do not severely hinder investigations of most poorly studied problems. The results of the author's recent studies on some of these topics are also briefly reported. In spite of thousands of studies conducted, facial attractiveness research may be regarded as rather poorly progressed, although prospects for it are good.