Attractiveness as a Function of Skin Tone and Facial Features: Evidence from Categorization Studies

Participants rated the attractiveness and racial typicality of male faces varying in their facial features from Afrocentric to Eurocentric and in skin tone from dark to light in two experiments. Experiment 1 provided evidence that facial features and skin tone have an interactive effect on perceptions of attractiveness and mixed-race faces are perceived as more attractive than single-race faces. Experiment 2 further confirmed that faces with medium levels of skin tone and facial features are perceived as more attractive than faces with extreme levels of these factors. Black phenotypes (combinations of dark skin tone and Afrocentric facial features) were rated as more attractive than White phenotypes (combinations of light skin tone and Eurocentric facial features); ambiguous faces (combinations of Afrocentric and Eurocentric physiognomy) with medium levels of skin tone were rated as the most attractive in Experiment 2. Perceptions of attractiveness were relatively independent of racial categorization in both experiments.     

Women outperform men in distinguishing between authentic and nonauthentic smiles

Women tend to be more accurate in decoding facial expressions than men. We hypothesized that women’s better performance in decoding facial expressions extends to distinguishing between authentic and nonauthentic smiles. We showed participants portrait photos of persons who smiled because either they saw a pleasant picture (authentic smile) or were instructed to smile by the experimenter (nonauthentic smile) and asked them to identify the smiles. Participants judged single photos of persons depicting either an authentic or a nonauthentic smile, and they judged adjacent photos of the same person depicting an authentic smile and a nonauthentic smile. Women outperformed men in identifying the smiles when judging the adjacent photos. We discuss implications for judging smile authenticity in real life and limitations for the observed sex difference.     

Factors contributing to individual differences in facial expression categorisation

Individuals vary in perceptual accuracy when categorising facial expressions, yet it is unclear how these individual differences in non-clinical population are related to cognitive processing stages at facial information acquisition and interpretation. We tested 104 healthy adults in a facial expression categorisation task, and correlated their categorisation accuracy with face-viewing gaze allocation and personal traits assessed with Autism Quotient, anxiety inventory and Self-Monitoring Scale. The gaze allocation had limited but emotion-specific impact on categorising expressions. Specifically, longer gaze at the eyes and nose regions were coupled with more accurate categorisation of disgust and sad expressions, respectively. Regarding trait measurements, higher autistic score was coupled with better recognition of sad but worse recognition of anger expressions, and contributed to categorisation bias towards sad expressions; whereas higher anxiety level was associated with greater categorisation accuracy across all expressions and with increased tendency of gazing at the nose region. It seems that both anxiety and autistic-like traits were associated with individual variation in expression categorisation, but this association is not necessarily mediated by variation in gaze allocation at expression-specific local facial regions. The results suggest that both facial information acquisition and interpretation capabilities contribute to individual differences in expression categorisation within non-clinical populations.     

Can perceivers recognise emotions from spontaneous expressions?

Posed stimuli dominate the study of nonverbal communication of emotion, but concerns have been raised that the use of posed stimuli may inflate recognition accuracy relative to spontaneous expressions. Here, we compare recognition of emotions from spontaneous expressions with that of matched posed stimuli. Participants made forced-choice judgments about the expressed emotion and whether the expression was spontaneous, and rated expressions on intensity (Experiments 1 and 2) and prototypicality (Experiment 2). Listeners were able to accurately infer emotions from both posed and spontaneous expressions, from auditory, visual, and audiovisual cues. Furthermore, perceived intensity and prototypicality were found to play a role in the accurate recognition of emotion, particularly from spontaneous expressions. Our findings demonstrate that perceivers can reliably recognise emotions from spontaneous expressions, and that depending on the comparison set, recognition levels can even be equivalent to that of posed stimulus sets.     

Perceived Conflict and Leader Dominance: Individual and Contextual Factors Behind Preferences for Dominant Leaders

Recent research finds that political candidates and leaders with dominant, masculine physical features are more preferred under conditions of conflict than of cooperation. Importantly, however, methodological limitations of past research have hindered the identification of whether this effect reflects that voters intuitively view (1) dominant leaders as more competent in solving problems of conflict, (2) nondominant leaders as more competent in solving problems of cooperation, or (3) both. In this article, we utilize recent advances in evolutionary psychology to form precise predictions on the nature of the underlying psychology and employ an unprecedented array of data types—including highly controlled experiments, natural experiments, and behavioral measures—to investigate the validity of these predictions. Using large approximately nationally representative surveys of 2,009 Poles and Ukrainians fielded during the Crimea crisis in 2014, we find that preferences for leader dominance are exclusively driven by the intuition that dominant leaders are better able to facilitate aggressive responses during social conflict and that these preferences are regulated by contextual conditions and individual predispositions related to such responses.     

Ratings of physical attractiveness within young,romantically engaged couples in Malaysia

This study examined the matching hypothesis, the positive illusions effect and the love is blind bias in young, romantically engaged couples in Malaysia. Each member of 58 young, romantically engaged heterosexual couples completed the Body Esteem Scale and items assessing physical attractiveness in relation to themselves and their partner. In support of the matching hypothesis, partners' perceptions of their own and their partner's facial and bodily attractiveness were significantly correlated. The positive illusions effect and the love is blind bias were also evident, with participants' ratings of partners being greater than both their own self‐ratings and their partner's self‐ratings of physical attractiveness. Although our findings suggest that these phenomena related to perceptions of physical attractiveness are evident across cultures, further studies are required.     

Women's hairstyle and men's behavior: A field experiment

Little research has examined the effect of women's hairstyles on people's behavior. In a field study, male and female passersby, walking alone in the street, were observed while walking behind a female‐confederate who dropped a glove and apparently was unaware of her loss. The confederate had long dark hair arranged in three different hairstyles: one with her hair falling naturally on her shoulders and her back, one with her hair tied in a ponytail, and one with her hair twisted in a bun. Results reported that the hairstyle had no effect on female passersby's helping behavior. However, it was found that the hairstyle influenced male passersby with men helping the confederate more readily when her hair fell naturally on her neck, shoulders and upper back.     

Effects of sex,status, and mating cues on expected aggressive responses

The effect of sex, status, and mating cues on expected aggression was examined via three scenario‐based studies in which participants imagined themselves in a situation with a same‐sex instigator of a provocation. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a scenario, which included one of two levels of status of instigator (high, low), one of two levels of attractiveness of the instigator (unattractive, attractive), and one of two levels of provocation (apology, insult). Sex and dispositional aggressivity were also included in a full factorial design. Based on evolutionary psychology ideas, we anticipated that status and attractiveness would differentially influence expected aggression for men vs. women. Participants in Experiment 1 were instructed to imagine that they were alone, whereas participants in Experiments 2 and 3 imagined themselves in a situation that included mating‐related primes. In general expected aggression was greater for aggression‐prone participants and under conditions of provocation and/or a high‐status instigator. Experiments 2 and 3 found that, in the context of mate competition, sex differences in the effects of instigator provocation, status, and attractiveness emerged: greater aggressivity now only predicted more aggression for males but not females who were insulted; aggression was highest for females confronting an unattractive, high‐status instigator and for males confronting an attractive, high‐status instigator; females were more likely to aggress against a high‐status instigator, regardless of being in a steady relationship or a first date situation, but males were only more likely to aggress against a high‐status instigator in a first date situation. Aggr. Behav. 35:259–273, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Brain asymmetry and autonomic conditioning: Sensitization control

In the present experiment we report effects of cerebral asymmetry, or laterality, during classical conditioning to facial emotional stimuli. Twenty-five female subjects were presented with slides of a happy face in one visual half-field (VHF), and simultaneously a slide of an angry face in the other VHF, followed by shock as the unconditioned stimulus (UCS). To control for effects of sensitization, a new stimulus, never associated with the UCS, was introduced in the extinction phase. Dependent measures were phasic heart rate responses (HR) and skin conductance responses (SCR). The HR results showed a significant right hemisphere effect for the CS-UCS association, that was not attributable to UCS sensitization. No significant effects were found for the SCRs. The basic HR finding was a right hemisphere superiority for learning of a conditioned association.     

Self-Ratings of Physical Attractiveness in a Competitive Context: When Males are More Sensitive to Self-Perceptions Than Females

Abstract

The authors investigated sex differences in the ratings of physical attractiveness in a competitive context. Participants in an Ultimatum Game experiment offered to split a sum of money with their opponents who could either accept or reject the offers; subsequently, physical attractiveness ratings (both self-ratings and of the other) were obtained. The authors found that male participants rated themselves higher on physical attractiveness when facing male opponents than when facing female ones; there was no such difference for the female participants. Furthermore, male participants' self-ratings of physical attractiveness were higher than the ratings provided by their corresponding male opponents. The authors discuss these findings using the tenets of evolutionary psychology pertaining to as male intra-sexual rivalry in competitive contexts.