Abstract
We studied the neural coding of facial attractiveness by investigating effects of adaptation to attractive and unattractive human faces on the perceived attractiveness of veridical human face pictures (Experiment 1) and art portraits (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 revealed a clear pattern of contrastive aftereffects. Relative to a pre-adaptation baseline, the perceived attractiveness of faces was increased after adaptation to unattractive faces, and was decreased after adaptation to attractive faces. Experiment 2 revealed similar aftereffects when art portraits rather than face photographs were used as adaptors and test stimuli, suggesting that effects of adaptation to attractiveness are not restricted to facial photographs. Additionally, we found similar aftereffects in art portraits for beauty, another aesthetic feature that, unlike attractiveness, relates to the properties of the image (rather than to the face displayed). Importantly, Experiment 3 showed that aftereffects were abolished when adaptors were art portraits and face photographs were test stimuli. These results suggest that adaptation to facial attractiveness elicits aftereffects in the perception of subsequently presented faces, for both face photographs and art portraits, and that these effects do not cross image domains.
Highlights
Amongst the many visual stimuli we regularly encounter, the human face is of particular relevance
The analysis revealed a significant effect of Adaptation Condition, F(2, 68) 5 47.21, p 0.001, ηp2 5 0.58, reflecting increased perceived attractiveness compared with the baseline condition (M 5 2.87, SD 5 0.41) after adaptation to unattractive faces (M 5 2.71, SD 5 0.47), t(34) 5 2.93, p 0.01, and reduced perceived attractiveness after adaptation to attractive faces (M 5 3.21, SD 5 0.32), t(34) 5 26.55, p 0.001
The results were entered into a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) considering Adaptation Condition as within-subject factor
Summary
Amongst the many visual stimuli we regularly encounter, the human face is of particular relevance. Is it an important cue to the identity of familiar people, but the efficient analysis of identityinvariant information allows for the categorization of unfamiliar faces, e.g. according to their gender, age, ethnicity, or emotional expression In addition to these seemingly objective decisions about social categories, we tend to instantly rate the attractiveness of a face (Cellerino, 2003). There is a large body of evidence showing that attractiveness ratings are remarkably consistent across observers and even cultures (Cunningham, Roberts, Barbee, Druen, & Wu, 1995; Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991; Feingold, 1992a, 1992b; Langlois et al, 2000; Rhodes et al, 2001a) This high consensus suggests that objective and universal factors determine the perception and judgement of facial attractiveness. An active area of research has been dedicated to investigating these factors, and statistical models have been developed to predict human ratings of
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