Preference For Faces Research Articles

Fear of Violence among Colombian Women Is Associated with Reduced Preferences for High-BMI Men

Recent studies reveal that violence significantly contributes to explaining individual’s facial preferences. Women who feel at higher risk of violence prefer less-masculine male faces. Given the importance of violence, we explore its influence on people’s preferences for a different physical trait. Masculinity correlates positively with male strength and weight or body mass index (BMI). In fact, masculinity and BMI tend to load on the same component of trait perception. Therefore we predicted that individuals’ perceptions of danger from violence will relate to preferences for facial cues to low-BMI. In two studies in Colombia, men and women from Bogota, Medellin, and surrounding communities were shown pairs of faces transformed to epitomize the shape correlates of men with high or low-BMI. The images were of European, Salvadoran, or Colombian men. Participants were asked to choose the face they considered most attractive. Subsequently, participants answered a survey about their health (e.g., frequency of illnesses the past year), media access (e.g., frequency of Internet use), education level (e.g., graduating from high school), and experiences/perceptions of violence in study 1 and about specific types of violence (public and domestic) in study 2. Results from both studies showed that women who experienced/perceived higher levels of violence preferred faces of low-BMI Salvadoran men. Preferences for low-BMI facial cues were significantly explained by violence (public or domestic), even after controlling for all other variables (including age, education, health, and media access). These results may reflect women’s strategy to avoid male partners capable of inflicting harm.

Distinct subdivisions of human medial parietal cortex support recollection of people and places.

Human medial parietal cortex (MPC) is implicated in multiple cognitive processes including memory recall, visual scene processing and navigation, and is a core component of the default mode network. Here, we demonstrate distinct subdivisions of MPC that are selectively recruited during memory recall of either specific people or places. First, distinct regions of MPC exhibited differential functional connectivity with medial and lateral regions of ventral temporal cortex (VTC). Second, these same medial regions showed selective, but negative, responses to the visual presentation of different stimulus categories, with clear preferences for scenes and faces. Finally, and most critically, these regions were differentially recruited during memory recall of either people or places with a strong familiarity advantage. Taken together, these data suggest that the organizing principle defining the medial-lateral axis of VTC is reflected in MPC, but in the context of memory recall.

Facing Competing Motives: Testing for Motivational Tradeoffs in Affiliative and Pathogen-Avoidant Motives via Extraverted Face Preferences

Affiliative and pathogen-avoidant motives adaptively influence interpersonal preferences. For facial structures connoting extraversion, affiliative motives heighten preferences for extraverted faces, whereas pathogen-avoidant motives downregulate preferences. Despite what appears to be competing tension between motives for preferences in extraverted faces, previous research had yet to identify this possibility within a single experiment. The current study temporally activated an affiliative, pathogen-avoidant, or control state before tasking participants with indicating preferences for extraverted faces, relative to introverted, and support for campus-wide social networking activities to demonstrate convergence with previous findings demonstrating temporal shifts in affiliative interest. Although activated motivational states did not influence interpersonal preferences directly in this study, mediation analyses revealed participants’ upregulated extraverted face preferences and support for a campus social network following an exclusionary experience because of a heightened affiliative desire. We frame results as motivational tradeoffs, offering suggestions to identify competing motive effects more effectively for future research.

Pathogen avoidance mechanisms affect women’s preference for symmetrical male faces.

Pathogen avoidance mechanisms affect women’s preference for symmetrical male faces.

The Frozen Effect: Objects in motion are more aesthetically appealing than objects frozen in time.

Videos of moving faces are more flattering than static images of the same face, a phenomenon dubbed the Frozen Face Effect. This may reflect an aesthetic preference for faces viewed in a more ecological context than still photographs. In the current set of experiments, we sought to determine whether this effect is unique to facial processing, or if motion confers an aesthetic benefit to other stimulus categories as well, such as bodies and objects—that is, a more generalized ‘Frozen Effect’ (FE). If motion were the critical factor in the FE, we would expect the video of a body or object in motion to be significantly more appealing than when seen in individual, static frames. To examine this, we asked participants to rate sets of videos of bodies and objects in motion along with the still frames constituting each video. Extending the original FFE, we found that participants rated videos as significantly more flattering than each video’s corresponding still images, regardless of stimulus domain, suggesting that the FFE generalizes well beyond face perception. Interestingly, the magnitude of the FE increased with the predictability of stimulus movement. Our results suggest that observers prefer bodies and objects in motion over the same information presented in static form, and the more predictable the motion, the stronger the preference. Motion imbues objects and bodies with greater aesthetic appeal, which has implications for how one might choose to portray oneself in various social media platforms.

A Data-Driven Test for Cross-Cultural Differences in Face Preferences.

Previous research has shown strong cross-cultural agreement in facial attractiveness judgments. However, these studies all used a theory-driven approach in which responses to specific facial characteristics are compared between cultures. This approach is constrained by the predictions that can be derived from existing theories and can therefore bias impressions of the extent of cross-cultural agreement in face preferences. We directly addressed this problem by using a data-driven, rather than theory-driven, approach to compare facial attractiveness judgments made by Chinese-born participants who were resident in China, Chinese-born participants currently resident in the UK, and UK-born and UK-resident White participants. Analyses of the principal components along which faces naturally varied suggested that Chinese and White UK participants used face information in different ways, at least when judging women's facial attractiveness. In other words, the data-driven approach used in this study revealed some cross-cultural differences in face preferences that were not apparent in studies using theory-driven approaches.

Preference for attractive faces is species-specific.

Studies on facial attractiveness in human adults, infants, and newborns have consistently reported a visual preference for faces rated as attractive compared with faces rated as unattractive. Biological accounts of facial attractiveness have typically presented such preferences as arising from adaptations for mate choice or as by-products of general sensory bias. In this cross-species study, we examined whether explicit ratings of attractiveness made by human judges would predict implicit visual preferences in other humans and also in rhesus macaques and, if they do, whether such preferences would extend beyond conspecific faces. Results showed that human ratings of attractiveness can predict implicit preferences in nonhuman primates (macaque monkeys; Macaca mulatta). However, we also found a species-specific effect of face attractiveness in which humans showed a visual preference for human faces (but not macaque faces) rated as attractive, and macaques displayed a visual preference for macaque faces (but not human faces) rated as attractive. Overall, the findings suggest that attentional bias toward attractive faces arises neither from an exclusive operation of mate choice adaptation mechanisms nor from the sole influence of a general sensory bias, but rather reflects their interaction. The influence of a general sensory bias may be modulated by the categorization of a face as conspecific or heterospecific, leading to species-specific preference for attractive faces. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of attentional behaviours on infant visual preferences and object choice.

Many developmental studies have examined the effects of joint attention. However, it has been difficult to compare effects of initiating joint attention and responding to joint attention in infants. Here, we compared the effects of initiating joint attention and responding joint attention on object information processing, object preference, and facial preferences in infants. Thirty-seven infants (10 to 12 months of age) were shown stimuli in which a female gazed towards or away from an object. Participants were assigned to initiating joint attention condition or responding joint attention condition. Results suggest that initiating joint attention promoted object information processing, whereas responding joint attention did not. Both joint attention conditions affected the facial preference for the person who engaged joint attention. In addition, after initiating joint attention, infants chose objects gazed by other person more often than after responding joint attention. It appears that attentional behaviours that precede the perception of certain stimuli affect infants' cognitive responses to those stimuli.

A simulation-based approach to improve decoded neurofeedback performance

The neural correlates of specific brain functions such as visual orientation tuning and individual finger movements can be revealed using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of fMRI data. Neurofeedback based on these distributed patterns of brain activity presents a unique ability for precise neuromodulation. Recent applications of this technique, known as decoded neurofeedback, have manipulated fear conditioning, visual perception, confidence judgements and facial preference. However, there has yet to be an empirical justification of the timing and data processing parameters of these experiments. Suboptimal parameter settings could impact the efficacy of neurofeedback learning and contribute to the ‘non-responder’ effect. The goal of this study was to investigate how design parameters of decoded neurofeedback experiments affect decoding accuracy and neurofeedback performance. Subjects participated in three fMRI sessions: two ‘finger localizer’ sessions to identify the fMRI patterns associated with each of the four fingers of the right hand, and one ‘finger finding’ neurofeedback session to assess neurofeedback performance. Using only the localizer data, we show that real-time decoding can be degraded by poor experiment timing or ROI selection. To set key parameters for the neurofeedback session, we used offline simulations of decoded neurofeedback using data from the localizer sessions to predict neurofeedback performance. We show that these predictions align with real neurofeedback performance at the group level and can also explain individual differences in neurofeedback success. Overall, this work demonstrates the usefulness of offline simulation to improve the success of real-time decoded neurofeedback experiments.

Women\u2019s preferences for men\u2019s facial masculinity are strongest under favorable ecological conditions

The strength of sexual selection on secondary sexual traits varies depending on prevailing economic and ecological conditions. In humans, cross-cultural evidence suggests women’s preferences for men’s testosterone dependent masculine facial traits are stronger under conditions where health is compromised, male mortality rates are higher and economic development is higher. Here we use a sample of 4483 exclusively heterosexual women from 34 countries and employ mixed effects modelling to test how social, ecological and economic variables predict women’s facial masculinity preferences. We report women’s preferences for more masculine looking men are stronger in countries with higher sociosexuality and where national health indices and human development indices are higher, while no associations were found between preferences and indices of intra-sexual competition. Our results show that women’s preferences for masculine faces are stronger under conditions where offspring survival is higher and economic conditions are more favorable.

Sociosexual attitudes differentially predict men and women's preferences for agreeable male faces

Sensitivity to personality variability through facial structures subsequently elicits inferences of another's behavioral intentions, which could include those pertaining to preferred reproductive strategies. Given the association between agreeableness and interest in long-term mating intentions, we predicted that individuals with a long-term mating orientation would prefer others whose faces communicate higher levels of trait agreeableness. Participants viewed pairs of male and female faces manipulated to connote high and low levels of agreeableness and indicated their preferences among each pair before completing the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory-Revised. Consonant with hypotheses, women espousing restricted sociosexual attitudes marginally preferred agreeable male faces. Furthermore, men espousing unrestricted attitudes preferred agreeable male faces, suggesting an interest in associating with men posing little intrasexual threat. Contrary to predictions, sociosexuality predicted neither men's nor women's preferences for agreeableness in female faces. We frame these results from an evolutionary perspective considering the identification of optimum mates and potential intrasexual rivals.

Differentiating social preference and social anxiety phenotypes in fragile X syndrome using an eye gaze analysis: a pilot study

BackgroundFragile X syndrome (FXS) is the leading inherited cause of autism spectrum disorder, but there remains debate regarding the clinical presentation of social deficits in FXS. The aim of this study was to compare individuals with FXS to typically developing controls (TDC) and individuals with idiopathic autism spectrum disorder (ASD) across two social eye tracking paradigms.MethodsIndividuals with FXS and age- and gender-matched TDC and individuals with idiopathic ASD completed emotional face and social preference eye tracking tasks to evaluate gaze aversion and social interest, respectively. Participants completed a battery of cognitive testing and caregiver-reported measures for neurobehavioral characterization.ResultsIndividuals with FXS exhibited reduced eye and increased mouth gaze to emotional faces compared to TDC. Gaze aversive findings were found to correlate with measures of anxiety, social communication deficits, and behavioral problems. In the social interest task, while individuals with idiopathic ASD showed significantly less social preference, individuals with FXS displayed social preference similar to TDC.ConclusionsThese findings suggest fragile X syndrome social deficits center on social anxiety without the prominent reduction in social interest associated with autism spectrum disorder. Specifically designed eye tracking techniques clarify the nature of social deficits in fragile X syndrome and may have applications to improve phenotyping and evaluate interventions targeting social functioning impairments.

A behavioral face preference deficit in a monkey with an incomplete face patch system

Primates are experts in face perception and naturally show a preference for faces under free-viewing conditions. The primate ventral stream is characterized by a network of face patches that selectively responds to faces, but it remains uncertain how important such parcellation is for face perception. Here we investigated free-viewing behavior in a female monkey who naturally lacks fMRI-defined posterior and middle lateral face patches. We presented a series of content-rich images of scenes that included faces or other objects to that monkey during a free-viewing task and tested a group of 10 control monkeys on the same task for comparison. We found that, compared to controls, the monkey with missing face patches showed a marked reduction of face viewing preference that was most pronounced for the first few fixations. In addition, her gaze fixation patterns were substantially distinct from those of controls, especially for pictures with a face. These data demonstrate an association between the clustering of neurons in face selective patches and a behavioral bias for faces in natural images.

An experimental and computational study into the crystallisation propensity of 2nd generation sulflower.

The crystallisation propensity of the newly synthesised molecule persulfurated coronene has been investigated through a number of experimental methods. Electrostatic potential calculations and multi-molecular optimisations show that face-face interactions are far more favorable than edge-face interactions, severely restricting the ability of the molecule to crystallise.

Racial Socialization and Thwarted Mentalization: Psychoanalytic Reflections from the Lived Experience of James Baldwin’s America

Racial Socialization and Thwarted Mentalization: Psychoanalytic Reflections from the Lived Experience of James Baldwin’s America Beverly J. Stoute (bio) “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion.” —Nelson Mandela James Baldwin, with eloquence and depth, articulated the lived experience of being Black in America. He understood the defensive psychological forces operative in binding aggression and hate in racial attitudes at a time when psychoanalysts were dissecting race and culture out of our theory of the mind, and struggling to understand racist thinking. We had not yet conceptualized othering as a psychodynamic process, or the relative importance of dignity as a construct. The social sciences came to the conversation on race and racism before the fields of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, and even now, we have a long way to go in understanding racism on a psychological level and elucidating how our unconscious racial attitudes affect health care delivery and practice in the field of mental health. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ publication of the acclaimed Between the World and Me (2015), a letter to his son in homage to James Baldwin, reminds us of the necessity for dialogue made stark by the ongoing public outcry after the shooting of Trayvon Martin (2012) and numerous unarmed Black men, including a mental health worker, by police officers (Grimm, 2016). These deaths haunt us as a society and return us to the conversation on race and racial socialization spearheaded by James Baldwin early in his career. Published initially in The Progressive in 1962 for the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, James Baldwin’s letter to his nephew entitled “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” was reprinted as the first chapter in his acclaimed work, The Fire Next Time. The May 17th, 1963 issue of Time magazine [End Page 335] with Baldwin’s picture on the cover, published three months before the March on Washington, contained a review of The Fire Next Time. This jumped it to the top of the nonfiction bestseller list, winning Baldwin international acclaim. The reviewer wrote, “In the US today there is not another writer—black or white—who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment of the North and South” (Chaliapin, 1963, p. 26). Today in 2019 that can still be said. Baldwin’s letter to his nephew in The Fire Next Time, though a literary source, still has contemporary relevance to the timely discussion of how our perception of racial difference and our unconscious race fantasies impact us daily, even as clinicians. As a child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, I will speak to my understanding of James Baldwin, and position his letter to his nephew in a developmental context of what African American parents have communicated for generations in what I will call a story of the trans-generational transmission of trauma, and the trans-generational transmission of dignity and defense in the lived experience of racial socialization in America. Drawing on a developmental perspective, I will review certain orienting data on race awareness and racial socialization not taught in most training programs in psychiatry or psychoanalysis before addressing what we, as clinicians, can learn from a re-examination of Baldwin’s work. I will demonstrate using clinical examples the invaluable importance of psychodynamic understanding in deconstructing how we process racial difference in treatment situations. The awareness of and curiosity about racial difference begins early and occurs spontaneously in the course of development. Studies demonstrate that infants as young as three months of age have a preference for faces of their own race, while infants at six months can recognize racial difference (Katz, 1976, 1982). By the age of three, children develop a sense of “outsiders”—people who are different from them (Fishbein, 1992, 2002). Mary Ellen Goodman’s classic research on Race Awareness in Children (1952) demonstrated that preschool age children of three and four years were clearly aware of race—making the connection to appearance and color but not yet to the concept of race as a social construct. [End Page 336] Kenneth and Maime Clark’s (1953) landmark...

Does the interaction between partnership status and average progesterone level predict women's preferences for facial masculinity?

Many studies have attempted to identify biological factors that reliably predict individual differences in women's preferences for masculine male faces. Marcinkowska et al. (2018, Hormones & Behavior) recently reported that women's (N = 102) preferences for facial masculinity were predicted by the interaction between their relationship status (partnered versus unpartnered) and average progesterone level. Because previous findings for between-women differences in masculinity preferences have often not replicated well, we attempted to replicate Marcinkowska et al.'s result in an open data set from another recent study that had not tested this hypothesis (Jones et al., 2018, Psychological Science). In this sample of 316 women, we found that facial masculinity preferences were predicted by the interaction between women's relationship status and average progesterone level, consistent with Marcinkowska et al.'s results (data and analysis code are available at https://osf.io/q9szc). Together, these findings suggest that the combined effects of relationship status and average progesterone level may predict facial masculinity preferences relatively reliably.

Shifting Preferences for Primate Faces in Neurotypical Infants and Infants Later Diagnosed With ASD.

Infants look at others' faces to gather social information. Newborns look equally at human and monkey faces but prefer human faces by 1 month, helping them learn to communicate and interact with others. Infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) look at human faces less than neurotypical infants, which may underlie some deficits in social-communication later in life. Here, we asked whether infants later diagnosed with ASD differ in their preferences for both human and nonhuman primate faces compared to neurotypical infants over their first 2 years of life. We compare infants' relative looking times to human or monkey faces paired with nonface controls (Experiment 1) and infants' total looking times to pairs of human and monkey faces (Experiment 2). Across two experiments, we find that between 6 and 18 months, infants later diagnosed with ASD show a greater downturn (decrease after an initial increase) in looking at both primate faces than neurotypical infants. A decrease in attention to primate faces may partly underlie the social-communicative difficulties in children with ASD and could reveal how early perceptual experiences with faces affect development. Autism Res 2019, 12: 249-262 © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Looking at faces helps infants learn to interact with others. Infants look equally at human and monkey faces at birth but prefer human faces by 1 month. Infants later diagnosed with ASD who show deficits in social-communication look at human faces less than neurotypical infants. We find that a downturn (decline after an initial increase) in attention to both human and monkey faces between 6 and 18 months may partly underlie the social-communicative difficulties in children with ASD.

Supplemental Material for Preference for Attractive Faces Is Species-Specific

Supplemental Material for Preference for Attractive Faces Is Species-Specific

Heart Rate Variability Predicts Older Adults' Avoidance of Negativity.

The ability to produce situation-appropriate cognitive and emotional responses is dependent on autonomic nervous system (ANS) functionality. Heart rate variability (HRV) is an index of ANS functionality, and resting HRV levels have been associated with cognitive control and inhibitory capacity in young adults, particularly when faced with emotional information. As older adults' greater preference for positive and avoidance of negative stimuli (positivity effect) is thought to be dependent on cognitive control, we hypothesized that HRV could predict positivity-effect magnitude in older adults. We measured resting-level HRV and gaze preference for happy and angry (relative to neutral) faces in 63 young and 62 older adults. Whereas young adults showed no consistent preference for happy or angry faces, older adults showed the expected positivity effect, which predominantly manifested as negativity avoidance rather than positivity preference. Crucially, older but not young adults showed an association between HRV and gaze preference, with higher levels of HRV being specifically associated with stronger negativity avoidance. This is the first study to demonstrate a link between older adults' ANS functionality and their avoidance of negative information. Increasing the efficiency of the cardiovascular system might selectively improve older adults' ability to disregard negative influences.

Recognition Memory in Marmoset and Macaque Monkeys: A Comparison of Active Vision.

The core functional organization of the primate brain is remarkably conserved across the order, but behavioral differences evident between species likely reflect derived modifications in the underlying neural processes. Here, we performed the first study to directly compare visual recognition memory in two primate species-rhesus macaques and marmoset monkeys-on the same visual preferential looking task as a first step toward identifying similarities and differences in this cognitive process across the primate phylogeny. Preferences in looking behavior on the task were broadly similar between the species, with greater looking times for novel images compared with repeated images as well as a similarly strong preference for faces compared with other categories. Unexpectedly, we found large behavioral differences among the two species in looking behavior independent of image familiarity. Marmosets exhibited longer looking times, with greater variability compared with macaques, regardless of image content or familiarity. Perhaps most strikingly, marmosets shifted their gaze across the images more quickly, suggesting a different behavioral strategy when viewing images. Although such differences limit the comparison of recognition memory across these closely related species, they point to interesting differences in the mechanisms underlying active vision that have significant implications for future neurobiological investigations with these two nonhuman primate species. Elucidating whether these patterns are reflective of species or broader phylogenetic differences (e.g., between New World and Old World monkeys) necessitates a broader sample of primate taxa from across the Order.