The Impact of Facial Attractiveness and Affective Person Knowledge on Visual Awareness

Abstract

AbstractPrevious research reported face perception in binocular rivalry was influenced by facial attractiveness. Some studies reported that affective person knowledge may also impact face awareness in binocular rivalry. However, it is unclear whether the effect of facial attractiveness on visual awareness would be modulated by affective person knowledge. The present study investigated the impact of facial attractiveness and affective person knowledge on visual awareness in binocular rivalry. Using affective learning paradigm, faces were presented with positive or negative behavior. Participants learned face-behavior pairs. Then, in binocular rivalry task, participants viewed faces and houses simultaneously and report their percept continuously. The results showed that attractive faces dominated longer time and were more often seen as the first percept than unattractive faces. Moreover, faces which were paired with negative behaviors were more often seen as the first percept and were suppressed for shorter time than faces paired with positive behaviors. These findings suggested the processing advantage of attractive faces in initial perceptual selection and later consciousness. Furthermore, faces associated with negative information reached awareness more quickly and had an advantage in initial dominance.KeywordsFacial attractivenessAffective learningBinocular rivalryAwareness