Physical attractiveness and health: comment on Weeden and Sabini (2005)

Seeing overweight adults as babies: Physical cues and implications for stigmatization

Human babies not only are reliable triggers of tender feelings and protective tendencies, they also happen to be exceptionally fat compared to the newborns of most other species. These two facts are used to formulate a hypothesis predicting that overweight males, due to their great physical resemblance to babies, not only are perceived as cute, but also are associated with negatively evaluated traits (e.g., immaturity, lack of willpower) that are saliently inconsistent with traits required for adults. In this study, a great many physical features of adult males varying widely in weight were measured and correlated with subjective judgements. Providing preliminary support for the hypothesis, it was found that the features that were correlated with objective and perceived fatness (e.g., circularity of body parts, relatively large head, short and thick neck) also correlated with perceived babyishness. Perceived fatness and babyishness had curvilinear influences on the positive and prosocial appraisal of cuteness, but were primarily negatively related to perceived willpower and beauty. Results are used to formulate an alternative evolutionary perspective on social responses to overweight and obese individuals, emphasizing the uniquely human adaptive value of fatness and the misfiring of the underlying response mechanism under modern conditions of living.

Facial Skin Smoothness as an Indicator of Perceived Trustworthiness and Related Traits

Facial texture has typically been studied as an umbrella phenomenon comprising several properties, such as skin tone and smoothness. Furthermore, texture has normally been addressed within complex models including also structural and dynamic properties and focusing on the extraction of perceptual dimensions from large numbers of physical and personality traits. It is yet unclear how individual facial textural properties affect the perception of individual physical and personality traits. We took a step in this direction by showing that the manipulation of a single facial textural property (skin smoothness) affected explicit evaluations of trustworthiness, competence, attractiveness, and health independently and in combination. Within the context of skin smoothness, our data also suggest a direct perceptual route for physical and an indirect perceptual route for personality traits.

Eye of the Beholder: Symmetry Perception in Social Judgments Based on Whole Body Displays

External bilateral symmetry is a biological marker of normal development and is considered a signal of health and attractiveness across species. Because most human interactions are dynamic, it was hypothesized that observers would be able to perceive spatiotemporal symmetry—symmetry in motion—in human point-light walkers. It was also hypothesized that observers would rate symmetrical walkers as healthy and attractive. Symmetrical and asymmetrical figures were presented to adult participants ( n = 22) in motion and as static images with motion implied. Static symmetry was readily perceived, and symmetrical figures were judged significantly healthier and more attractive than asymmetrical figures. However, observers were unable to discriminate symmetry in dynamic presentations. These data provide preliminary evidence of a temporal summation window for a dynamic symmetry perception.

Eye of the beholder: Symmetry perception in social judgments based on whole body displays

External bilateral symmetry is a biological marker of normal development and is considered a signal of health and attractiveness across species. Because most human interactions are dynamic, it was hypothesized that observers would be able to perceive spatiotemporal symmetry-symmetry in motion-in human point-light walkers. It was also hypothesized that observers would rate symmetrical walkers as healthy and attractive. Symmetrical and asymmetrical figures were presented to adult participants (n = 22) in motion and as static images with motion implied. Static symmetry was readily perceived, and symmetrical figures were judged significantly healthier and more attractive than asymmetrical figures. However, observers were unable to discriminate symmetry in dynamic presentations. These data provide preliminary evidence of a temporal summation window for a dynamic symmetry perception.

Who is The Fairest One of All? How Evolution Guides Peer and Media Influences on Female Body Dissatisfaction

Much attention has focused on the influence of media images of thin women on body dissatisfaction among female viewers. Disagreement exists regarding the nature of media influences, with meta-analytic results suggesting only small effect sizes. Fewer researchers have focused on the role of peer influences and peer competition on female body dissatisfaction. Furthermore, the relation between body dissatisfaction and eating disorders may be more complex than is often implied in the media effects literature. Links between body dissatisfaction and eating disorders may be overstated, and some eating disorders, primarily anorexia nervosa, may not always be motivated primarily by body dissatisfaction. The current paper discusses these issues from an evolutionary perspective, examining how sociocultural forces influence the intensity of female competition and how such competition effects body dissatisfaction.

Human's cognitive ability to assess facial cues from photographs: a study of sexual selection in the Bolivian Amazon

BACKGROUND

Evolutionary theory suggests that natural selection favors the evolution of cognitive abilities which allow humans to use facial cues to assess traits of others. The use of facial and somatic cues by humans has been studied mainly in western industrialized countries, leaving unanswered whether results are valid across cultures.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

Our objectives were to test (i) if previous finding about raters' ability to get accurate information about an individual by looking at his facial photograph held in low-income non western rural societies and (ii) whether women and men differ in this ability. To answer the questions we did a study during July-August 2007 among the Tsimane', a native Amazonian society of foragers-farmers in Bolivia. We asked 40 females and 40 males 16-25 years of age to rate four traits in 93 facial photographs of other Tsimane' males. The four traits were based on sexual selection theory, and included health, dominance, knowledge, and sociability. The rating scale for each trait ranged from one (least) to four (most). The average rating for each trait was calculated for each individual in the photograph and regressed against objective measures of the trait from the person in the photograph. We found that (i) female Tsimane' raters were able to assess facial cues related to health, dominance, and knowledge and (ii) male Tsimane' raters were able to assess facial cues related to dominance, knowledge, and sociability.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE

Our results support the existence of a human ability to identify objective traits from facial cues, as suggested by evolutionary theory.

Internal facial features are signals of personality and health

We investigated forms of socially relevant information signalled from static images of the face. We created composite images from women scoring high and low values on personality and health dimensions and measured the accuracy of raters in discriminating high from low trait values. We also looked specifically at the information content within the internal facial features, by presenting the composite images with an occluding mask. Four of the Big Five traits were accurately discriminated on the basis of the internal facial features alone (conscientiousness was the exception), as was physical health. The addition of external features in the full-face images led to improved detection for extraversion and physical health and poorer performance on intellect/imagination (or openness). Visual appearance based on internal facial features alone can therefore accurately predict behavioural biases in the form of personality, as well as levels of physical health.

Physical attractiveness and reproductive success in humans: Evidence from the late 20 century United States

Physical attractiveness has been associated with mating behavior, but its role in reproductive success of contemporary humans has received surprisingly little attention. In the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (1244 women, 997 men born between 1937 and 1940) we examined whether attractiveness assessed from photographs taken at age ~18 predicted the number of biological children at age 53-56. In women, attractiveness predicted higher reproductive success in a nonlinear fashion, so that attractive (second highest quartile) women had 16% and very attractive (highest quartile) women 6% more children than their less attractive counterparts. In men, there was a threshold effect so that men in the lowest attractiveness quartile had 13% fewer children than others who did not differ from each other in the average number of children. These associations were partly but not completely accounted for by attractive participants' increased marriage probability. A linear regression analysis indicated relatively weak directional selection gradient for attractiveness (β=0.06 in women, β=0.07 in men). These findings indicate that physical attractiveness may be associated with reproductive success in humans living in industrialized settings.

Good genes, complementary genes and human mate preferences

The past decade has witnessed a rapidly growing interest in the biological basis of human mate choice. Here we review recent studies that demonstrate preferences for traits which might reveal genetic quality to prospective mates, with potential but still largely unknown influence on offspring fitness. These include studies assessing visual, olfactory and auditory preferences for potential good-gene indicator traits, such as dominance or bilateral symmetry. Individual differences in these robust preferences mainly arise through within and between individual variation in condition and reproductive status. Another set of studies have revealed preferences for traits indicating complementary genes, focussing on discrimination of dissimilarity at genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). As in animal studies, we are only just beginning to understand how preferences for specific traits vary and inter-relate, how consideration of good and compatible genes can lead to substantial variability in individual mate choice decisions and how preferences expressed in one sensory modality may reflect those in another. Humans may be an ideal model species in which to explore these interesting complexities.

Tall and Good-Looking?

While there has been much emphasis on the objective properties of beautiful faces, some theories of physical attractiveness implicate norm-based coding of faces and experience-dependent preferences (e.g., Langlois & Roggman, 1990 ; Rhodes, Jeffery, Watson, Clifford, & Nakayama, 2003 ). This study further explored experiential influences by correlating a person’s standing height with his/her ideal vertical location of the internal features in computerized faces. Taller raters created faces with larger ratios of forehead height to chin height–resulting in a larger forehead and a smaller chin, presumably caused by their biased exposure to faces from above eye level. Faces produced by shorter raters had a smaller forehead and a larger chin. The moderate correlation was maintained after controlling for age and gender (i.e., semipartial r = .41; N = 39), and rater height alone explained 24% of the variance in preferred location of the internal facial features. These results point to individual differences in perceptions of attractiveness, accounted for to some degree by the facial proportions encountered in everyday interactions.

Good genes, complementary genes and human mate preferences

The past decade has witnessed a rapidly growing interest in the biological basis of human mate choice. Here we review recent studies that demonstrate preferences for traits which might reveal genetic quality to prospective mates, with potential but still largely unknown influence on offspring fitness. These include studies assessing visual, olfactory and auditory preferences for potential good-gene indicator traits, such as dominance or bilateral symmetry. Individual differences in these robust preferences mainly arise through within and between individual variation in condition and reproductive status. Another set of studies have revealed preferences for traits indicating complementary genes, focussing on discrimination of dissimilarity at genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). As in animal studies, we are only just beginning to understand how preferences for specific traits vary and inter-relate, how consideration of good and compatible genes can lead to substantial variability in individual mate choice decisions and how preferences expressed in one sensory modality may reflect those in another. Humans may be an ideal model species in which to explore these interesting complexities.