Limitations of traditional morphometrics in research on the attractiveness of faces

Holland, Erik

doi:10.3758/pbr.16.3.613

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…We recognize that our method of identifying these facial features shows some limitations. Because faces are processed in a holistic way, that is, people tend to perceive and judge faces as a whole and not as an identity of separated and independent features, this process of measuring multiple facial distances between landmark points in space tends to ignore the general facial shape ( Holland, 2009 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgments of Dominance from the Face Track Physical Strength

2014

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It is commonly assumed that judgments of dominance from faces partly rely on implicit judgments of bodily strength. In two studies, we demonstrate such a relation for both computer-generated and natural photos of male faces. We find support when aggregating data across participants, when analyzing with hierarchical models, and also when strength and dominance are judged by different raters. Moreover, we identify common predictors that underlie perceptions of both strength and dominance: brow height, eye length, chin length, and the widths of the nose and mouth.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judgments of Dominance from the Face Track Physical Strength

2014

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“…First, measures of facial landmark distance (e.g. Euclidean or Mahalanobis distances) may not properly take configural information into account (Rhodes, 2006; see also Holland, 2009). Second, such measures almost certainly differ from the way in which humans perceive facial similarity: for example, some evidence suggests that humans judge family relatedness from facial resemblance by ‘correcting’ for sex and age differences between faces, which facial metric techniques cannot necessarily do (Maloney & Dal Martello, 2006; DeBruine et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kin recognition: evidence that humans can perceive both positive and negative relatedness

Krupp

DeBruine

Jones³

et al. 2012

J of Evolutionary Biology

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The evolution of spite entails actors imposing costs on ‘negative’ relatives: those who are less likely than chance to share the actor’s alleles and therefore more likely to bear rival alleles. Yet, despite a considerable body of research confirming that organisms can recognize positive relatives, little research has shown that organisms can recognize negative relatives. Here, we extend previous work on human phenotype matching by introducing a cue to negative relatedness: negative self‐resembling faces, which differ from an average face in the opposite direction to the way an individual’s own face differs from the average. Participants made trustworthiness and attractiveness judgements of pairs of opposite‐sex positive and negative self‐resembling faces. Analyses revealed opposing effects of positive and negative self‐resembling faces on trustworthiness and attractiveness judgements. This is the first clear evidence that humans are sensitive to negative relatedness cues, and suggests the potential for the adaptive allocation of spiteful behaviour.

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“…Morphometric face analysis, however, has demonstrated that quantification of the morphological cues is crucial234. For studying correlates of facial shape variation, researchers are now turning to geometric morphometric (GMM) methods, which can combine biological factors, shape information, and trait inference in the same data space.…”

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confidence: 99%

Patterns of correlation of facial shape with physiological measurements are more integrated than patterns of correlation with ratings

Windhager

Bookstein

Millesi

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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This article exploits a method recently incorporated in the geometric morphometric toolkit that complements previous approaches to quantifying the facial features associated with specific body characteristics and trait attribution during social perception. The new method differentiates more globally encoded from more locally encoded information by a summary scaling dimension that is estimated by fitting a line to the plot of log bending energy against log variance explained, partial warp by partial warp, for some sample of varying shapes. In the present context these variances come from the regressions of shape on some exogenous cause or effect of form. We work an example involving data from male faces. Here the regression slopes are steepest, and the sums of explained variances over the uniform component, partial warp 1 and partial warp 2 are greatest, for the conventional body mass index, followed by cortisol and, lastly, perceived health. This suggests that physiological characteristics may be represented at larger scale (global patterns), whereas cues in perception are of smaller scale (local patterns). Such a polarity within psychomorphospace, the global versus the focal, now has a metric by which patterns of morphology can be modeled in both biological and psychological studies.

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Limitations of traditional morphometrics in research on the attractiveness of faces

Abstract: Conclusions Different From Potter and Corneille's (2008)In many non-European populations, the attractive face is less ethnic-looking and closer to European norms than the average.

Cited by 7 publications

References 33 publications

Judgments of Dominance from the Face Track Physical Strength

Judgments of Dominance from the Face Track Physical Strength

Kin recognition: evidence that humans can perceive both positive and negative relatedness

Patterns of correlation of facial shape with physiological measurements are more integrated than patterns of correlation with ratings

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