The relative contributions of facial shape and surface information to perceptions of attractiveness and dominance.

Jaimie S Torrance,Lisa M Debruine,Benedict C Jones,Joanna Wincenciak,Amanda C Hahn,Bernhard Fink

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0104415

Abstract

Although many studies have investigated the facial characteristics that influence perceptions of others’ attractiveness and dominance, the majority of these studies have focused on either the effects of shape information or surface information alone. Consequently, the relative contributions of facial shape and surface characteristics to attractiveness and dominance perceptions are unclear. To address this issue, we investigated the relationships between ratings of original versions of faces and ratings of versions in which either surface information had been standardized (i.e., shape-only versions) or shape information had been standardized (i.e., surface-only versions). For attractiveness and dominance judgments of both male and female faces, ratings of shape-only and surface-only versions independently predicted ratings of the original versions of faces. The correlations between ratings of original and shape-only versions and between ratings of original and surface-only versions differed only in two instances. For male attractiveness, ratings of original versions were more strongly related to ratings of surface-only than shape-only versions, suggesting that surface information is particularly important for men’s facial attractiveness. The opposite was true for female physical dominance, suggesting that shape information is particularly important for women’s facial physical dominance. In summary, our results indicate that both facial shape and surface information contribute to judgments of others’ attractiveness and dominance, suggesting that it may be important to consider both sources of information in research on these topics.

Highlights

Judgments of others’ facial attractiveness and dominance play an important role in social perceptions and have a significant influence on social interactions [1,2,3]
We investigated whether ratings of shape-only or surfaceonly versions of faces were the better predictor of ratings of the attractiveness, general dominance, social dominance, and physical dominance of original versions of faces
For each type of judgment we found that ratings of original versions of both male and female faces were independently predicted by ratings of shape-only versions and ratings of surface-only versions of faces

Summary

Introduction

Judgments of others’ facial attractiveness and dominance play an important role in social perceptions and have a significant influence on social interactions [1,2,3]. People tend to avoid cooperating with individuals displaying facial cues of dominance, potentially because dominant individuals are more likely to exploit others’ trust [4]. This effect of dominance on cooperation can be modulated by the salience of ingroup versus out-group competition for resources, [5]. Manipulating some shape characteristics in face images, such as symmetry [10,11] and prototypicality [12,13,14], affects their attractiveness, while experimentally manipulating other shape characteristics, such as facial width, affects perceptions of dominance-related traits, such as aggression [15]. Together these results demonstrate that shape information in faces influences perceptions of both others’ attractiveness and others’ dominance

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Results

Conclusion