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Abstract

The current literature shows mixed results regarding whether the perception of facial attractiveness is automatic, i.e. that it operates independently from attentional resources. We argue that an evolutionary perspective on mating strategies provides a comprehensive account of the findings. In two studies, we used the locus-of-slack logic in a psychological refractory period paradigm. Task 1 was a speeded judgment of tone pitch (low vs. high), and Task 2 was a speeded judgment of whether a face was attractive or unattractive on two difficulty levels. Male and female participants judged the attractiveness of opposite-sex faces (Study 1, n = 73) or same-sex faces (Study 2, n = 94) in this paradigm. Results indicate that men do not need attentional resources when processing female faces (Study 1), but require attentional resources when processing same-sex faces (Study 2). In contrast, women need attentional resources to process the attractiveness of opposite as well as same-sex faces.

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... Men also show stronger activation of the area of the brain associated with reward when judging facial attractiveness than women (Cloutier et al., 2008). Men are able to quickly process female faces, and the effect was not influenced by the difficulty of task, which suggests that male process female faces automatically (Klümper et al., 2020). Conversely, an attractive female face poses a potential threat to other women's reproductive success (Buss & Schmitt, 2019). ...
... Men value physical attractiveness of potential partners more than women (Schwarz & Hassebrauck, 2012); thus, they do not require attentional resources when processing female faces but not when processing same-sex faces. Whether the target face is male or female, women utilize cognitive resources for processing (Klümper et al., 2020). These results are consistent with the evolutionary perspective on facial attractiveness-that is, men easily capture a potential mate's facial attractiveness, and cues of fertility and healthiness, which could increase reproductive success (Buss & Schmitt, 2019). ...
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Introduction Individuals differ in how they judge facial attractiveness. However, little is known about the role of arousal level and gender differences in individuals’ facial attractiveness judgments. Methods We used resting‐state electroencephalogram (EEG) to investigate this issue. A total of 48 men (aged 22.5 ± 3.03 years [mean ± SD], range: 18–30 years) and 27 women (aged 20.3 ± 2.03 years [mean ± SD], range: 18–25 years) participated in the experiment. After the EEG was collected, participants were instructed to complete a facial attractiveness judgment task. Connectome‐based predictive modeling was used to predict individual judgment of facial attractiveness. Results Men with high arousal judged female faces as more attractive (M = 3.85, SE = 0.81) than did men with low arousal (M = 3.33, SE = 0.81) and women (M = 3.24, SE = 1.02). Functional connectivity of the alpha band predicted judgment of female facial attractiveness in men but not in women. After controlling for the age and variability, the prediction effect was still significant. Conclusion Our results provide neural evidence for the enhancement of the judgment of facial attractiveness in men with high arousal levels, which supports the hypothesis that individuals’ spontaneous arousal contributes to variations in facial attractiveness preferences.
... Beide Studien betrachteten nur die physische Attraktivität des Targets, wobei die Eigenschaften des Perceivers und mögliche Interaktionen vernachlässigt wurden. In einer kürzlich veröffentlichten Studie (Klümper et al. 2020) wurden zur Aufklärung der uneinheitlichen Ergebnisse mittels des Psychologischen Refraktärperioden Paradigmas (PRP) die Vorhersagen zur kapazitätsfreien Verarbeitung aus dem Flaschenhals-Modell (Posner und Snyder 1975) durch Vorhersagen zu intersexuellen Unterschieden in der Relevanz der physischen Attraktivität bei der Partnerwahl (Buss und Schmitt 1993) ergänzt. Demnach werden weibliche Targets nur von männlichen (und nicht weiblichen) Perceivern automatisch verarbeitet, wobei männliche Targets weder von männlichen noch weiblichen Perceivern automatisch verarbeitet werden. ...
Chapter
Wovon hängt der viel berühmte „erste Eindruck“ ab, wenn wir privat oder beruflich neuen Menschen begegnen? Und welchen Einfluss können unsere Eigenschaften und Bedürfnisse auf die Wahrnehmung einer anderen Person bei dieser Begegnung haben? Im folgenden Buchkapitel werden wir diesen Fragen nachgehen und dafür zunächst vorstellen, anhand welcher Dimensionen die Wahrnehmung fremder Personen charakterisiert werden kann. Daraufhin ziehen wir Parallelen zu den relevanten Dimensionen bei der Wahrnehmung potenzieller Partnerinnen und Partner und diskutieren die Wichtigkeit der Domänen in Abhängigkeit von Eigenschaften der betrachtenden Person. Wir werden darlegen, dass bestimmte Personen (Targets) von bestimmten Betrachterinnen und Betrachtern (Perceivern) unterschiedlich wahrgenommen werden (Target x Perceiver-Interaktion). Hierbei fokussieren wir uns auf das Geschlecht als relevante Perceiver-Variable. Weiterhin werden wir aufzeigen, dass sich die unterschiedliche Wichtigkeit in der Bewertung von Partnermerkmalen nicht nur im Selbstbericht widerspiegelt. Es liegen bereits erste Befunde vor, welche auf Target-, Perceiver-, und Target × Perceiver-Interaktionseffekte bei der automatischen Verarbeitung von Partnermerkmalen auf basaler kognitiver Ebene hindeuten. Abschließend fassen wir zusammen, welche Fragen die empirische Forschung bereits geklärt hat und welche noch offen sind. Aus unserer Sicht eröffnet sich durch ein systematisches und umfassendes Verständnis der automatischen Verarbeitung in der Personenwahrnehmung ein interessantes Forschungsfeld für die evolutionären Sozialwissenschaften, um theoriegeleitet Hypothesen über den Einfluss von „Kultur“ auf den verschiedenen Stufen der Verarbeitung, beginnend bei sehr basalen automatischen Prozessen auf der Ebene der Wahrnehmung und Aufmerksamkeit, bis zu sehr kontrollierten und verzerrten Antworten im Selbstbericht, abzuleiten und zu überprüfen.
... Some studies have investigated the aesthetic perception of faces using CFD in non-US populations. For example, in populations from Germany (Klümper et al., 2020;Mertens et al., 2021), Italy (Balconi et al., 2020), Ireland (Ho and Newell, 2020), Australia (Ecker and Rodricks, 2020;White et al., 2021), and specifically in studies investigating the aesthetics perception of faces and its relationship with facial asymmetry, such as in a population from the Netherlands (Roth et al., 2022), England (Aksentijevic et al., 2021, Brazil (Monteiro et al., 2022), or those that do not report where the participants are from Lee et al. (2021) and Staller and Randler (2021). ...
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The scientific need for standardized, high-quality facial stimuli has driven the creation of several face image databases in recent years. These stimuli are particularly important in facial asymmetry research. However, previous studies have reported facial anthropometric differences across a variety of ethnicities. This highlights the need to investigate whether these differences can also impact the use of face image databases, particularly in facial asymmetry research. In this study, we investigated facial asymmetry-based morphometric differences between the multi-ethnic Chicago Face Database (CFD) and the LACOP Face Database, which is composed of Brazilian subjects. We found reliable differences in facial asymmetry between the two databases, which were related to ethnic groups. Specifically, differences in eye and mouth asymmetry seem to drive these differences. The asymmetry-based morphometric differences among databases and ethnicities found in this study reinforce the necessity of creating multi-ethnic face databases.
... Nevertheless, this study had some limitations that should be considered in future research. First, gender differences were not explored in detail, even though a plethora of research on facial attractiveness has emphasized the importance of gender 8,76,77 . In fact, participants may pay more attention to the opposite gender due to the biological purpose of reproduction 78,79 . ...
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Makeup is widely used in modern society and has a positive effect on perceived attractiveness. However, little is known about the other possible outcomes of makeup use. In this study, we investigated whether makeup enhances a receiver’s emotional experience. Dynamic faces with or without makeup are presented in Experiments 1 and 2. Participants were asked to imagine themselves video chatting with a target person (expresser) with different expressions: neutral, angry, sad, or happy, and then to appraise their own subjective emotional experience. Emotional valence, arousal, and willingness to communicate were also assessed in Experiment 2. The results showed that makeup improved perceived facial attractiveness and increased the willingness to communicate. More importantly, it revealed that wearing makeup could weaken receivers’ negative experiences arising from the angry and sad conditions, which is not the case for the non-makeup condition, but could not affect the happy contagion. Furthermore, incremental changes in the amount of makeup were not accompanied by incremental changes in emotional appraisal (valence and arousal). Overall, we found that makeup may affect emotional contagion and interpersonal communication. Whether the alleviated negative experience due to makeup is adaptive may need further discussion.
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Background: The ‘beer goggles’ phenomenon describes sexual attraction to individuals when alcohol intoxicated whom we would not desire when sober. One possible explanation of the effect is that alcohol impairs the detection of facial asymmetry, thus lowering the drinker’s threshold for physical attraction. Aims: We therefore tested the hypotheses that higher breath alcohol drinkers would award more generous ratings of attractiveness to asymmetrical faces, and be poorer at discriminating bilateral facial asymmetry than less intoxicated counterparts. Methods: Ninety-nine male and female bar patrons rated 18 individual faces for attractiveness and symmetry. Each type of rating was given twice, once per face with an enhanced asymmetry and once again for each face in its natural form. Participants then judged which of two same-face versions (one normal, the other perfectly symmetrised) was more attractive and, in the final task, more symmetrical. Results: Alcohol had no influence on attractiveness judgements but higher blood alcohol concentrations were associated with higher symmetry ratings. Furthermore, as predicted, heavily intoxicated individuals were less able to distinguish natural from perfectly symmetrised face versions than more sober drinkers. Conclusions: Findings therefore suggest alcohol impairs face asymmetry detection, but it seems that this perceptual distortion does not contribute to the ‘beer goggles’ phenomenon.
Chapter
In this chapter, we review the literature on attractiveness by explaining the multifaceted nature of attractiveness and then focusing on physical attractiveness as it has a predominant impact on attractiveness.
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Makeup is widely used in modern society and has a positive effect on perceived attractiveness. However, little is known about the other possible outcomes of makeup use. In this study, we investigated whether makeup enhances a receiver’s emotional experience. Dynamic faces with or without makeup are presented in Experiments 1 and 2. Participants were asked to imagine themselves video chatting with a target person (expresser) with different expressions: neutral, angry, sad, or happy, and then to appraise their own subjective emotional experience. Emotional valence, arousal, and willingness to communicate were also assessed in Experiment 2. The results showed that makeup improved perceived facial attractiveness and increased the willingness to communicate. More importantly, it revealed that wearing makeup could weaken receivers’ negative experiences arising from the angry and sad conditions, which is not the case for the non-makeup condition, but could not affect the happy contagion. Furthermore, incremental changes in the amount of makeup were not accompanied by incremental changes in emotional appraisal (valence and arousal). Overall, we found that makeup may affect emotional contagion and interpersonal communication. Whether the alleviated negative experience due to makeup is adaptive may need further discussion.
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Evolved mate preferences comprise a central causal process in Darwin's theory of sexual selection. Their powerful influences have been documented in all sexually reproducing species, including in sexual strategies in humans. This article reviews the science of human mate preferences and their myriad behavioral manifestations. We discuss sex differences and sex similarities in human sexual psychology, which vary according to short-term and long-term mating contexts. We review context-specific shifts in mating strategy depending on individual, social, and ecological qualities such as mate value, life history strategy, sex ratio, gender economic inequality, and cultural norms. We review the empirical evidence for the impact of mate preferences on actual mating decisions. Mate preferences also dramatically influence tactics of mate attraction, tactics of mate retention, patterns of deception, causes of sexual regret, attraction to cues to sexual exploitability, attraction to cues to fertility, attraction to cues to resources and protection, derogation of competitors, causes of breakups, and patterns of remarriage. We conclude by articulating unresolved issues and offer a future agenda for the science of human mating, including how humans invent novel cultural technologies to better implement ancient sexual strategies and how cultural evolution may be dramatically influencing our evolved mating psychology. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 70 is January 4, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
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How and why do our minds generate different levels of attraction to others? This chapter integrates life history, evolutionary psychology, and human biology approaches to address this question. Biological adaptations regulate a vast number of life history trade-offs that affect how we look, smell, sound, and behave. Selection produced adaptations that evaluate these cues and regulate our degree of attraction to others based on their relative probable social value to us in different contexts. This chapter outlinesthe alternative evolutionary explanations for the emergence of an attraction,basic components necessary for attraction systems to evolve, and sources of variation in attractiveness assessment. It identifies different domains of social value for which attractiveness assessment evolved, reviews evidence for some of the hypothesized attractiveness-assessment adaptations in those domains, and highlights avenues calling for increased attention. Finally, it calls for greater integration of evolutionary psychology, human biological research, and data from small-scale foraging societies to generate predictions about these domains of social value, the cues or signals associated with them, adaptations selected to regulate attraction to them, and the life history trade-offs involved in these processes. New research on body shape attractiveness is presented to illustrate these points.
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This chapter focuses on (1) outlining an adaptationist perspective on physical attractiveness, (2) presenting the basic questions that this perspective leads us to ask, (3) reviewing some important empirical advances in the answering of these questions, and (4) highlighting research avenues calling for increased attention. It argues that human physical attractiveness assessment is generated by adaptations functioning to evaluate evolutionarily relevant cues to human social value across multiple domains of interaction (kin, mating, cooperation) and that evolutionary human life history theory and data from small-scale foraging societies are instrumental in generating predictions about these domains of social value and the cues associated with them. The chapter presents the foundation on which physical (and nonphysical) attractiveness across different domains of social value can most usefully be based and from which those conducting research on physical attractiveness could generate more specific adaptationist hypotheses and empirical tests.
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We tested the hypothesis that, compared with sociosexually restricted individuals, those with an unrestricted approach to mating would selectively allocate visual attention to attractive opposite-sex others. We also tested for sex differences in this effect. Seventy-four participants completed the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory, and performed a computer-based task that assessed the speed with which they detected changes in attractive and unattractive male and female faces. Differences in reaction times served as indicators of selective attention. Results revealed a Sex X Sociosexuality interaction: Compared with sociosexually restricted men, unrestricted men selectively allocated attention to attractive opposite-sex others; no such effect emerged among women. This finding was specific to opposite-sex targets and did not occur in attention to same-sex others. These results contribute to a growing literature on the adaptive allocation of attention in social environments.
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Response grouping is a ubiquitous phenomenon in psychological refractory period (PRP) tasks, yet it hampers the analysis of dual-task performance. To account for response grouping, we developed several extended versions of the standard bottleneck model, each of which incorporates a possible grouping mechanism into this model. Computer simulations were used to assess how the predictions of the standard model would change with each grouping mechanism. One set of simulations investigated the basic effects of grouping on the means and intercorrelation of the reaction times in the two tasks, as well as the percentage of trials with short interresponse times (IRTs). A second set of simulations examined whether response grouping would invalidate the use of PRP paradigms for localizing experimental effects. Finally, we investigated whether the post-hoc elimination of trials with short IRTs removes the contaminating effects of response grouping.
Dual-task interference in simple tasks: Data and theory
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