面孔吸引力特点及其影响因素研究综述

面孔吸引力是传递社会情感信息的重要来源。面孔的平均化、对称性、性别二态性特征等因素会影响对面孔吸引力的评价,且面孔吸引力评价与信任度,表情等因素相关。近年来采用f MR I技术发现当让被试评价有吸引力的面孔时,杏仁核、眶额叶、腹侧枕叶等脑区被激活,并且发现关于面孔吸引力的大脑活动具有性别差异。     

基于候选人面孔的特质推理与投票决策

在竞选情境中, 基于政治候选人面孔的能力或热情特质推理可以预测选举结果。面孔吸引力、面孔成熟度、面部表情和面孔熟悉度等因素对基于面孔的特质推理预测竞选结果起着重要作用。近年来, 研究者已经由基于面孔预测结果的行为研究逐步扩展到神经机制的研究上, 采用fMRI技术发现当被试对候选人面孔做负性特质判断和投票时, 杏仁核、岛叶、腹前侧扣带回等脑区会被激活, 而获胜候选人的照片并不会引起脑区的激活。研究者从认知取向和进化适应角度解释了人们为什么会根据面孔中的特质推理进行预测。以往研究在实验材料、研究内容等方面仍有不足, 这也指明了未来的研究方向。     

自尊对基于面孔吸引力人格特质推断的影响

自尊影响面孔吸引力刻板印象,然而由于能动性特质自我评价能够预测自尊,高自尊的个体拥有更高的能动性自我评价,因此自尊对面孔吸引力刻板印象的影响是否只体现在能动性特质维度上还未可知。60名女被试分别评价高、低吸引力女性目标在能动性和社群性人格特质维度上的符合程度。结果发现：能动性维度上,高自尊被试对高吸引力目标在积极特质形容词的符合程度评价显著高于低自尊被试,低自尊被试对低吸引力目标在积极特质形容词的符合程度评价显著高于高自尊被试;社群性维度上,高、低自尊被试均认为高吸引力目标与积极特质形容词更符合。研究结果表明,自尊对面孔吸引力刻板印象的影响主要体现在能动性评价上;在社群性评价上,高、低自尊被试都表现出面孔吸引力刻板印象。     

基于儒家文化的“帝王相”之民间意象的首次探索

本研究通过评价不同性别二态线索和吸引力的面孔图片来考察儒家文化下人们心中帝王面孔形象。采用FaceGen Modeller 3.1操作面孔性别二态线索,并通过PhotoShop CS5合成面孔材料。研究发现:被试认为女性化的男性面孔比男性化的男性面孔更具"帝王相";低吸引力的女性化男性面孔比高吸引力的女性化男性面孔更具"帝王相";不同性别被试之间的评价无显著差异。上述结果显示,在儒家文化影响下,人们偏好具有女性化面孔特点的帝王。     

面孔吸引力观察者参照:“角度效应”的眼动研究

以标准的黑白面孔图片作为实验材料,让41名大学生观看不同倾斜角度(左倾、竖直和右倾)的面孔图片,并对之进行面孔吸引力的评价,同时用眼动仪记录被试的眼动数据。结果显示:(1)被试观看左倾和右倾面孔的平均瞳孔大小显著小于观看竖直面孔的平均瞳孔大小,观看左倾面孔的平均瞳孔大小显著大于右倾面孔;(2)被试对左倾和右倾面孔的平均注视时间显著短于对竖直面孔的平均注视时间,同时对左倾面孔的注视时间显著长于右倾面孔;(3)被试对左倾和右倾面孔的平均注视次数显著少于对竖直面孔的平均注视次数。实验结果表明,面孔的倾斜角度很可能是影响面孔吸引力的一个重要因素,在面孔吸引力的审美偏好中存在"角度效应",即竖直面孔的吸引力高于倾斜面孔的吸引力,左倾面孔的吸引力高于右倾面孔的吸引力。     

面孔吸引力的整体表征及其动态性增强

面孔作为一种高级的视觉刺激,在人际交往中有着无可替代的作用。其中,面孔吸引力更是影响着日常生活的重要社交决策,如择偶、交友、求职、社会交换等。长久以来,研究者们从面孔特征、社会信息和观察者因素等角度不断探索着人们对静态面孔吸引力的感知,且多从进化角度加以解释。但是,人们如何表征面孔吸引力以及其动态性增强机制仍未可知。本项目通过两个研究,分别从面孔吸引力的整体表征,以及面孔动态性通过影响整体加工、影响对整体信息和特征信息的注意、以及影响社会信息来增强吸引力,从这两个角度尝试回答这一问题。在研究1中,本项目从整体加工的角度探索了面孔吸引力的认知表征。研究1.1通过评分任务和适应范式探索高空间频率（更多局部特征）和低空间频率（更多整体特征）对面孔吸引力的影响,旨在从空间频率探讨面孔吸引力的整体表征。研究1.2通过操纵面孔对称性和面孔常态性探索面孔常态性在面孔对称性和面孔吸引力间的中介作用,探讨面孔吸引力的常态构型表征。研究1.3引入“三庭五眼”这一中国传统面孔审美理论,通过评分任务和适应范式研究“三庭五眼” 构型是否符合中国人对高吸引力中国面孔的表征,以此探讨面孔吸引力的整体表征。研究1.4通过评分任务和适应范式考察局部面孔遮挡是否促进整体面孔吸引力,以及这种促进作用是否由于人们通过局部特征“脑补”出了完整面孔。研究2从整体加工、注意和生命力的角度探讨面孔吸引力的动态性增强机制。研究2.1使用合成效应范式测量动态面孔吸引力的整体加工,探索动静态面孔的吸引力差异是否源于其整体加工程度的不同。研究2.2使用注意分散范式,并结合眼动技术,探讨人们对动静态面孔的注视模式是否存在差异,这种差异是否能解释动态面孔吸引力的增强。研究2.3结合问卷法、实验法和结构方程模型,考察了生命力这一社会因素对动静态面孔吸引力的影响。本项目探讨了面孔吸引力的认知表征以及其动态性增强机制,有助于我们进一步理解人们对面孔吸引力的认知加工以及人类欣赏美这一高级智能。同时,本项目的结果对于日常人际交往和面孔吸引力相关算法的优化等方面也有潜在的应用价值。     

面孔吸引力同化的连续性效应

以往研究表明目标面孔的吸引力评价会偏向背景面孔, 产生同化效应。但同化效应的计算常常是对不同背景下目标面孔吸引力评分进行比较, 并没有考虑目标面孔单独呈现时的吸引力评分, 可能是虚假的同化效应。本文以单独呈现的目标面孔吸引力评分作为基准值计算同化效应, 考察了呈现时间和目标与背景面孔吸引力的差异对目标面孔吸引力评价的影响。结果发现, 个体对目标面孔吸引力的评分会偏向背景面孔的吸引力, 并表现出同化的连续性效应, 即目标和背景面孔的吸引力差异越大, 同化效应越小。     

面孔吸引力研究方法综述

面孔吸引力研究是目前西方认知心理学、社会心理学以及文化心理学研究者们所共同关注的一个崭新的研究领域。众多研究表明,面孔的平均化、对称性和性别二态性是影响面孔吸引力的三个主要生物学因素。这些发现得益于各种面孔图像处理技术的发展和应用,其中包括多次曝光摄影技术、漫画和反漫画技术、Morph技术、“凯米拉”合成法以及面部特征测量法等。     

面孔参照或观察者参照：性别二态线索、面孔吸引力与表情对正视面孔偏好的影响

本研究探讨了性别二态线索、面孔吸引力和表情对正视面孔偏好的影响。实验1基于面孔参照,被试普遍偏好正视面孔;相对男性化/厌恶和生气/低吸引力的面孔,被试更偏好女性化/高兴和中性/高吸引力的正视面孔;实验2基于观察者参照,总体并未表现出正视偏好;对低吸引力/中性表情/男性化面孔更偏好斜视面孔。     

面孔吸引力在认知过程中的作用及其神经机制

面孔吸引力是与进化有关的重要信息。面孔吸引力能被快速的感知,进而影响其它认知加工。近年来,学者在注意、时间知觉、学习、记忆和决策五个方面对面孔吸引力在认知过程中的作用及其神经机制做了大量研究。现有研究存在的争议主要集中于在相似的实验任务中面孔吸引力所诱发的行为反应或神经活动不同。而且以往研究在内容、技术手段和刺激材料等方面还存在可改进或扩展之处。未来研究应更多使用fMRI技术对面孔吸引力影响认知过程的脑机制进行深入探讨。     

The effects of facial adiposity on attractiveness and perceived leadership ability

Facial attractiveness has a positive influence on electoral success both in experimental paradigms and in the real world. One parameter that influences facial attractiveness and social judgements is facial adiposity (a facial correlate to body mass index, BMI). Overweight people have high facial adiposity and are perceived to be less attractive and lower in leadership ability. Here, we used an interactive design in order to assess whether the most attractive level of facial adiposity is also perceived as most leader-like. We found that participants reduced facial adiposity more to maximize attractiveness than to maximize perceived leadership ability. These results indicate that facial appearance impacts leadership judgements beyond the effects of attractiveness. We suggest that the disparity between optimal facial adiposity in attractiveness and leadership judgements stems from social trends that have produced thin ideals for attractiveness, while leadership judgements are associated with perception of physical dominance.     

When facial attractiveness is only skin deep

Whilst the relationship between aspects of facial shape and attractiveness has been extensively studied, few studies have investigated which characteristics of the surface of faces positively influence attractiveness judgments. As many researchers have proposed a link between attractiveness and traits that appear healthy, apparent health of facial skin might be a property of the surface of faces that positively influences attractiveness judgments. In experiment 1 we tested for a positive correlation between ratings of the apparent health of small skin patches (extracted from the left and right cheeks of digital face images) and ratings of the attractiveness of male faces. By using computer-graphics faces, in experiment 2 we aimed to establish if apparent health of skin influences male facial attractiveness independently of shape information. Results suggest that apparent health of facial skin is correlated both with ratings of male facial attractiveness (experiment 1) and with being a visual cue for judgments of the attractiveness of male faces (experiment 2). These findings underline the importance of controlling for the influence of visible skin condition in studies of facial attractiveness and are consistent with the proposal that attractive physical traits are those that positively influence others' perceptions of an individual's health.     

Computational models of facial attractiveness judgments

We designed two computational models to replicate human facial attractiveness ratings. The primary model used partial least squares (PLS) to identify image factors associated with facial attractiveness from facial images and attractiveness ratings of those images. For comparison we also made a model similar to previous models of facial attractiveness, in that it used manually derived measurements between features as inputs, though we took the additional step of dimensionality reduction via principal component analysis (PCA) and weighting of PCA dimensions via a perceptron. Strikingly, both models produced estimates of facial attractiveness that were indistinguishable from human ratings. Because PLS extracts a small number of image factors from the facial images that covary with attractiveness ratings of the images, it is possible to determine the information used by the model. The image factors that the model discovered correspond to two of the main contemporary hypotheses of averageness judgments: facial attractiveness and sexual dimorphism. In contrast, facial symmetry was not important to the model, and an explicit feature-based measurement of symmetry was not correlated with human judgments of facial attractiveness. This provides novel evidence for the importance of averageness and sexual dimorphism, but not symmetry, in human judgments of facial attractiveness.     

Facial attractiveness as a moderator of the association between social and physical aggression and popularity in adolescents

This study examined the relations between facial attractiveness, aggression, and popularity in adolescence to determine whether facial attractiveness would buffer against the negative effects of aggression on popularity. We collected ratings of facial attractiveness from standardized photographs, and teachers provided information on adolescents' social aggression, physical aggression, and popularity for 143 seventh graders (70 girls). Regression analyses indicated that facial attractiveness moderated the relations between both types of aggression and popularity. Aggression was associated with a reduction in popularity for adolescents low on facial attractiveness. However, popularity did not decrease as a function of aggression for adolescents high on facial attractiveness. Aggressors with high facial attractiveness may experience fewer negative consequences to their social standing, thus contributing to higher overall rates of aggression in school settings.     

Once more: is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Relative contributions of private and shared taste to judgments of facial attractiveness

Misconstruing the meaning of Cronbach's alpha, experts on facial attractiveness have conveyed the impression that facial-attractiveness judgment standards are largely shared. This claim is unsubstantiated, because information necessary for deciding whether judgments of facial attractiveness are more influenced by commonly shared or by privately held evaluation standards is lacking. Three experiments, using diverse face and rater samples to investigate the relative contributions of private and shared taste to judgments of facial attractiveness, are reported. These experiments show that for a variety of ancillary conditions, and contrary to the prevalent notion in the literature, private taste is about as powerful as shared taste. Important implications for scientific research strategy and laypeople's self-esteem are discussed.     

Facial attractiveness

Humans in societies around the world discriminate between potential mates on the basis of attractiveness in ways that can dramatically affect their lives. From an evolutionary perspective, a reasonable working hypothesis is that the psychological mechanisms underlying attractiveness judgments are adaptations that have evolved in the service of choosing a mate so as to increase gene propagation throughout evolutionary history. The main hypothesis that has directed evolutionary psychology research into facial attractiveness is that these judgments reflect information about what can be broadly defined as an individual's health. This has been investigated by examining whether attractiveness judgments show special design for detecting cues that allow us to make assessments of overall phenotypic condition. This review examines the three major lines of research that have been pursued in order to answer the question of whether attractiveness reflects non-obvious indicators of phenotypic condition. These are studies that have examined facial symmetry, averageness, and secondary sex characteristics as hormone markers.     

Vulnerability of facial attractiveness perception to early and multi-year visual deprivation

Judgments of facial attractiveness invariably accompany our perception of faces. Even neonates appear to be capable of making such judgments in a manner consistent with adults. This suggests that the processes supporting facial attractiveness require little, if any, visual experience to manifest. Here we investigate the resilience of these processes to several years of early-onset visual deprivation. Specifically, we study whether congenitally blind children treated several years after birth possess the ability to rate facial attractiveness in a manner congruent to normally sighted individuals. The data reveal significant individual variability in the way each newly sighted child perceives attractiveness. This is in marked contrast to data from normally sighted controls who exhibit strong across-subject agreement in facial attractiveness ratings. This variability may be attributable, in part, to atypical facial encoding strategies used by the newly sighted children. Overall, our results suggest that the development of facial attractiveness perception is likely to be vulnerable to early visual deprivation, pointing to the existence of a possible sensitive period early in the developmental trajectory.     

The relative influence of facial neoteny and waist-to-hip ratio on judgements of female attractiveness and fecundity

Numerous studies have demonstrated that waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) affects perceptions of female physical attractiveness and fecundity. This study tested the assumption that facial attractiveness explained more variance in overall ratings and fecundity than WHR, when the latter is manipulated within the normal range (0.67 - 0.85). One hundred and sixty-one participants (mean age = 21.5) rated the attractiveness, youthfulness, fertility, healthiness and likelihood of being pregnant for 27 photographs of three females in which facial attractiveness in terms of neoteny (three levels) and WHR (three levels) had been systematically digitally manipulated. Facial attractiveness exerted a significant influence on judgements of attractiveness, youthfulness, fertility and healthiness, whereas WHR only affected likelihood of being pregnant. Results are interpreted in terms of neotenous facial attractiveness providing potential mates with information concerning phenotypic and genetic quality.     

Are attractive men's faces masculine or feminine? The importance of type of facial stimuli

The authors investigated whether differences in facial stimuli could explain the inconsistencies in the facial attractiveness literature regarding whether adults prefer more masculine- or more feminine-looking male faces. Their results demonstrated that use of a female average to dimorphically transform a male facial average produced stimuli that did not accurately reflect the relationship between masculinity and attractiveness. In contrast, use of averages of masculine males and averages of feminine males produced stimuli that did accurately reflect the relationship between masculinity and attractiveness. Their findings suggest that masculinity contributes more to male facial attractiveness than does femininity, but future research should investigate how various combinations of facial cues contribute to male facial attractiveness.