Skin coloration is a culturally-specific cue for attractiveness, healthiness, and youthfulness in observers of Chinese and western European descent

Abstract

Facial skin coloration signals information about an individual and plays an important role in social interactions and mate choice, due its putative association with health, attractiveness, and age. Whether skin coloration as an evolutionary significant cue is universal or specific to a particular culture is unclear and current evidence on the universality of skin color as a cue to health and attractiveness are equivocal. The current study used 80 calibrated, high-resolution, non-manipulated images of real human faces, either of Chinese or western European descent, which were rated in terms of attractiveness, healthiness, and perceived age by 44 observers, 22 western European (13 male; mean age ± SD = 24.27 ± 5.30) and 22 Chinese (7 male; mean age ± SD = 26.05 ± 3.96) observers. To elucidate the associations between skin coloration and these perceptual ratings and whether these associations are modulated by observer or image ethnicity, a linear mixed-effect model was setup with skin lightness (L*; CIELAB), redness (a*) and yellowness (b*), observer and image ethnicity as independent variables and perceived attractiveness, healthiness, and estimated age as dependent variables. We found robust positive associations between facial skin lightness (L*) and attractiveness, healthiness, and youthfulness, but only when Chinese observers judge facial images of their own ethnicity. Observers of European descent, on the other hand, associated an increase in yellowness(b*) with greater attractiveness and healthiness in Chinese facial images. We find no evidence that facial redness is positively associated with these attributes; instead, an increase in redness (a*) is associated with an increase in the estimated age of European facial images. We conclude that observers of both ethnicities make use of skin color and lightness to rate attractiveness, healthiness, and perceived age, but to a lesser degree than previously thought. Furthermore, these coloration cues are not universal and are utilized differently within the Chinese and western European ethnic groups. Our study adds to the growing body of work demonstrating the importance of skin color manipulations within an evolutionary meaningful parameter space, ideally using realistic skin models based on physical parameters.

Different colour predictions of facial preference by Caucasian and Chinese observers

“…As noted above, the use of different facial colour cues is ethnicity specific (Figs. 5 , 6 , 7 ) and our current study extends our previous report on the ethnicity specific use of the average facial skin colour 16 . Moreover, the cultural differences include the opposite preference for facial lightness and the different importance of the three classes of colour traits (average skin colour, skin colour variation, and facial colour contrast) in preference evaluation.…”

“…Decreased facial lightness and increased facial yellowness enhance Caucasians’ facial attractiveness and perceived healthiness, which could be explained by the melanin- and carotenoid-linked health-signalling system 11 , 33 . In contrast to previous reports, facial redness (a* or cheek-a*) is not an important predictor for Caucasian preference,- corroborating our previous work 16 and may be due to the small range of naturally occurring skin colour variation and thus the observers focus more on the other colour cues when rating the real facial images. In the current study, facial colour contrast did not emerge as an important predictor of preference in Caucasians, in contrast to previous studies 21 , 22 , 24 ; only contrast around the mouth showed a limited role in attractiveness and perceived health.…”

“…More importantly, the existing studies on the same colour predictors generated controversial results, potentially due to the different methodologies. Studies in which facial skin colour was experimentally manipulated reported generally much stronger associations between facial colour characteristics and preference have been revealed compared to recent studies using non-manipulated facial images 15 , 16 , 28 – 30 . In the former studies, observers were asked either to manipulate the facial colour to enhance their perceived preference or to rate or make a preference choice between the colour-manipulated facial images.…”

“…Malaysian Chinese observers, by contrast, associated increased yellowness and redness, but decreased lightness with enhanced perceived healthiness 36 . Our previous study also concluded that skin colouration is not a universal but culturally-specific cue for attractiveness, healthiness, and youthfulness in observers of Chinese and Caucasian ethnic groups 16 . Note that only the average skin colour was considered in the studies described above, whereas in the present study, cultural differences between Chinese and Caucasian samples are further explored taking into account a range of facial colour characteristics.…”

“…Different facial colour characteristics have been assessed by previous work, including average facial skin colour 11 – 16 , local skin colour 17 , skin colour variation 18 – 20 , and facial colour contrast 21 – 24 , for their role in facial preference judgements. With a few notable exceptions, these studies generally examined the role of a single colour characteristic in predicting facial preference.…”