Physically attractive faces attract us physically

Abstract

When interacting with other humans, facial expressions provide valuable information for approach or avoid decisions. Here, we consider facial attractiveness as another important dimension upon which approach-avoidance behaviours may be based. In Experiments 1–3, we measured participants' responses to attractive and unattractive women's faces in an approach-avoidance paradigm in which there was no explicit instruction to evaluate facial attractiveness or any other stimulus attribute. Attractive faces were selected more often, a bias that may be sensitive to response outcomes and was reduced when the faces were inverted. Experiment 4 explored an entirely implicit measure of approach, with participants passively viewing single faces while standing on a force platform. We found greater lean towards attractive faces, with this pattern being most obvious in male participants. Taken together, these results demonstrate that attractiveness activates approach-avoidance tendencies, even in the absence of any task demand.