Turning Heads: The Effects of Face View and Eye Gaze Direction on the Perceived Attractiveness of Expressive Faces

Abstract

We investigated whether the perceived attractiveness of expressive faces was influenced by head turn and eye gaze towards or away from the observer. In all experiments, happy faces were consistently rated as more attractive than angry faces. A head turn towards the observer, whereby a full-face view was shown, was associated with relatively higher attractiveness ratings when gaze direction was aligned with face view (Experiment 1). However, preference for full-face views of happy faces was not affected by gaze shifts towards or away from the observer (Experiment 2a). In Experiment 3, the relative duration of each face view (front-facing or averted at 15°) during a head turn away or towards the observer was manipulated. There was benefit on attractiveness ratings for happy faces shown for a longer duration from the front view, regardless of the direction of head turn. Our findings support previous studies indicating a preference for positive expressions on attractiveness judgements, which is further enhanced by the front views of faces, whether presented during a head turn or shown statically. In sum, our findings imply a complex interaction between cues of social attention, indicated by the view of the face shown, and reward on attractiveness judgements of unfamiliar faces.

Vienna Talking Faces (ViTaFa): A multimodal person database with synchronized videos, images, and voices

“…Notably, happy facial expressions have consistently been associated with a multitude of positive social attributions, encompassing qualities such as sincerity, competence, sociability (Reis et al, 1990 ), trustworthiness (Calvo et al, 2018 ), familiarity, and overall positivity (Garrido et al, 2017 ). This influence extends to attractiveness perception, where studies have consistently shown that individuals tend to rate happy facial expressions as more attractive than neutral or angry expressions (Calvo et al, 2018 ; Garrido et al, 2017 ; Ho & Newell, 2020 ; Kaisler et al, 2020 ; Lindeberg et al, 2019 ; Reis et al, 1990 ; Ueda et al, 2016 ). Moreover, these investigations suggest that attractiveness perception is intricately linked to emotional expression, with the valence (positive or negative) and intensity of the emotion further shaping these judgments (Ueda et al, 2016 ).…”

Facial morphometric differences across face databases: influence of ethnicities and sex

“…Some studies have investigated the aesthetic perception of faces using CFD in non-US populations. For example, in populations from Germany (Klümper et al, 2020;Mertens et al, 2021), Italy (Balconi et al, 2020), Ireland (Ho and Newell, 2020), Australia (Ecker and Rodricks, 2020;White et al, 2021), and specifically in studies investigating the aesthetics perception of faces and its relationship with facial asymmetry, such as in a population from the Netherlands (Roth et al, 2022), England (Aksentijevic et al, 2021, Brazil (Monteiro et al, 2022), or those that do not report where the participants are from Lee et al (2021) and Staller and Randler (2021).…”