Evidence for adaptive design in human gaze preference

Abstract

Many studies have investigated the physical cues that influence face preferences. By contrast, relatively few studies have investigated the effects of facial cues to the direction and valence of others' social interest (i.e. gaze direction and facial expressions) on face preferences. Here we found that participants demonstrated stronger preferences for direct gaze when judging the attractiveness of happy faces than that of disgusted faces, and that this effect of expression on the strength of attraction to direct gaze was particularly pronounced for judgements of opposite-sex faces (study 1). By contrast, no such opposite-sex bias in preferences for direct gaze was observed when participants judged the same faces for likeability (study 2). Collectively, these findings for a context-sensitive opposite-sex bias in preferences for perceiver-directed smiles, but not perceiver-directed disgust, suggest gaze preference functions, at least in part, to facilitate efficient allocation of mating effort, and evince adaptive design in the perceptual mechanisms that underpin face preferences.

Interactions among the Effects of Head Orientation, Emotional Expression, and Physical Attractiveness on Face Preferences

“…In a similar vein, studies have shown that participants generally prefer faces with direct gaze to those with averted gaze (Mason et al 2005;Conway et al 2008a), but that these preferences are stronger when judging oppositesex than own-sex faces (Mason et al 2005;Conway et al 2008a), physically attractive faces than physically unattractive faces (Conway et al 2008b), and faces with happy expressions than faces with disgusted expressions (Conway et al 2008a). Integrating information about the sex and physical attractiveness of others with information about the direction and valence of their social interest in this way may serve an important function during social interactions by promoting efficient and effective allocation of social effort (ie by promoting allocation of more social effort to the most attractive individuals who appear willing to reciprocate öConway Jones et al 2006;Mason et al 2005;O'Doherty et al 2003).…”

“…By contrast with this emphasis on the effects that physical cues have on facial attractiveness, recent studies have also investigated the ways in which the effects of these invariant physical cues and those of changeable social signals, such as gaze direction and expression, might interact when judging the attractiveness of others (eg Conway et al 2008a;Jones et al 2006;Kampe et al 2001;O'Doherty et al 2003).…”

Integrating Gaze Direction and Sexual Dimorphism of Face Shape When Perceiving the Dominance of Others

“…More recent studies, however, have demonstrated that facial attractiveness is influenced by interactions between relatively invariant physical cues in faces and more changeable social signals, such as gaze direction (Conway et al 2008a(Conway et al , 2008bJones et al 2006;Kampe et al 2001). For example, Jones et al (2006) found that preferences for attractive colour and texture cues were stronger when judging the attractiveness of faces that were smiling at the viewer than when judging faces that were looking at the viewer with a neutral expression or that were looking away from the viewer.…”

“…Technical details of the averaging procedure we used to manufacture these prototypes are given in Tiddeman et al (2001). These methods have been used to generate face stimuli in many previous studies (eg Conway et al 2008aConway et al , 2008bConway et al , 2009DeBruine et al 2006;Jones et al 2004Jones et al , 2005Jones et al , 2006Perrett et al 2002).…”

“…Additionally, neurobiological evidence suggests that direct gaze increases the reward value of attractive faces (ie the extent to which viewing attractive faces causes activity in brain regions associated with processing rewards), but not of relatively unattractive faces (Kampe et al 2001). Other recent studies have shown that perceiver-directed smiles are considered more attractive from opposite-sex individuals than own-sex individuals (Conway et al 2008a) and from healthy-looking, attractive individuals than relatively unhealthy-looking, unattractive individuals (Conway et al 2008b). While these studies demonstrate interactions between gaze direction and physical characteristics in faces when perceiving the attractiveness of others, it is not known whether similar interactions occur for other types of social attribution, such as dominance.…”