The Relative Contributions of Facial Shape and Surface Information to Perceptions of Attractiveness and Dominance

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.

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

“…Following previous research that used similar data-driven methods to study Western participants' attractiveness judgments (Holzleitner et al, 2018;Said & Todorov, 2011), raw ratings were standardized (converted to z scores) prior to averaging. Before standardizing, ratings were similar to those reported for attractiveness in studies using similar stimuli (Bronstad et al, 2008;Kościński, 2013;Torrance et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2016; see Table 1).…”

“…Although this is not unusual for studies using standardized face stimuli (see, e.g., Bronstad et al, 2008;Kościński, 2013;Torrance et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2016), it means that our results may not necessarily generalize to judgments of highly attractive faces.…”

Cultural differences in preferences for facial coloration

“…Effects of skin characteristics on facial attractiveness judgments are at least as large as (if not larger than) those of shape characteristics (Stephen et al, 2012;Said & Todorov, 2011;Scott, Pound, Stephen, Clark, & Penton-Voak, 2010;Torrance, Wincenciak, Hahn, DeBruine, & Jones, 2014). Studies have reported that independently increasing yellowness, lightness, or redness in face images increases both their attractiveness and perceived health (Fisher, Hahn, DeBruine, & Jones, 2014;Kandrik et al, 2017;Stephen, Law Smith, Stirrat, & Perrett, 2009a;Stephen, Coetzee, Law Smith, & Perrett, 2009b;Stephen, Coetzee, & Perrett, 2011; see also Lefevre et al, 2013).…”

Do fine feathers make a fine bird? The influence of attractiveness on fraud‐risk judgments by internal auditors

“…This procedure entailed three steps described in the following subsections: (a) initial attractiveness rating for young and old face stimuli taken from a larger database (for details, see later and Table ); (b) creation of unattractive/attractive younger and older female/male faces based on (a); (c) validation of perceived attractiveness of face stimuli created in (b) by an independent group of observers. Thus, our procedure identified and validated the facial information determining attractiveness ratings across a large group of observers and faces (see also Oosterhof & Todorov, ; Torrance, Wincenciak, Hahn, DeBruine, & Jones, ), in a data‐driven manner.…”