Attractiveness Preferences

1
Attractiveness Preferences

• Adults children
• Prefer attractive over unattractive individuals
• Use similar standards for attractiveness
  evaluation
• Show cross-cultural similarities in
  attractiveness judgments
• Numerous studies through 1970s and 1980s

2
Historical Assumptions

• Gradual learning through exposure to
  socialization agents (e.g., parents, peers) and
  media
• Standards of attractiveness vary across historic
  time, generations, and cultures

3
Origins of Attractiveness Preferences

• Through extensive cultural input
• Learning processes (operant conditioning,
  observational)
• Preferences shouldnt become apparent until age
  3-5 years
• Eye of the beholder theory
• However, lack of empirical work

4
Empirical Methods

• Comparison of historical evidence (e.g.,
  painting, sculpture, written descriptions, etc.)
• Cross cultural, longitudinal studies
• Look for attractiveness preferences in young
  infants

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Judith Langlois

• Developmental psychologist
• Social development, emphasis on origins of social
  stereotypes, particularly facial attractiveness
• Currently at University of Texas, Austin

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Why Start with Facial Attractiveness?

• Infant visual system
• Part of body most seen from early in life
• In humans, primary means of individual
  identification
• Facial expressions

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Infants Learn about Faces Early

• Infants prefer mothers face to female stranger
  within 45 hours of birth (Field et al. 1984)
• 12 to 36 hour old infants suck more to see video
  of their mothers faces as opposed to female
  strangers (Walton et al. 1992)

8
Development

• 3 months
• Discriminate familiar from unfamiliar faces
• 6 months
• Distinguish faces by age and sex
• Preferences for happy over angry faces

9
Gaze Time

• Show two paired side-by-side images
• Record amount of time gazing at each image
• More time assumed to indicate greater preference

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Controls

• Differences between faces other than
  attractiveness
• E.g., hair colour, skin colour, hair style, age
  effects, sex, facial expression, etc.
• Can be quite challenging

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Langlois et al. (1987)

• Undergraduates rated colour slides of adult
  Caucasian women
• Selected 8 attractive and 8 unattractive faces
• Paired images for gaze time testing
• Within-trial (attractive paired with
  unattractive)
• Across-trial (two similarly ranked faces)

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Results

• 34 six to eight month old infants
• 71 gazed longer at attractive faces
• 62 spent less time looking at paired
  unattractive than paired attractive faces
• 30 two-three month old infants
• 63 gazed longer at attractive faces
• No significant differences for across-trial test
• Attentional processes? Focus on whatever seen
  first?

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Langlois et al. (1991)

• Faces rated for attractiveness by undergraduates
• Adult Caucasian males, adult African-American
  females, infant faces
• Six month old infants
• Infants prefer to look at attractive over
  unattractive faces

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Conclusions

• Infant preferences established at very early age
• Gender, ethnicity, age not relevant to
  preferences
• Too young for socialization model to explain
• Preferences too diverse for socialization model
  to explain

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What is Beautiful is Good

• Attractive people possess positive attributes
  (e.g., kindness, socially outgoing, etc.)
• Unattractive people possess negative traits
  (e.g., mean, stupid, unpleasant, etc.)
• Transferring from perceptual to behavioural
• Common in adults (e.g., Dion, 1973)
• What about infants?

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Langlois et al. (1990)

• Test that gaze time equates to beauty is good in
  adults
• Used 12 month olds
• Infants interacted with female adult stranger in
  attractive or unattractive lifelike latex mask
• Stranger followed scripted behaviours rated as
  identical by observers for both conditions

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Results

• Strong social preference for attractive
  stranger
• More positive affect towards attractive
  stranger
• Similar findings where 12 month olds given two
  dolls to play with one with attractive, one with
  unattractive head
• Infants visual preferences for attractive faces
  functionally equivalent to social preferences for
  attractiveness in adults and older children

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What Makes a Face Attractive?

• Langlois suggests averageness
• Galton (1878) photo-averaged faces of criminals
  inadvertently found regression toward the mean
• Langlois Roggman (1990)
• Morphed up to 32 faces 16 32 morphs most
  attractive
• Langlois lab

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By Average We Mean

• Average faces not average in attractiveness
• Average in terms of the mean, or central,
  tendency of facial traits of the population
• Average faces are above average in
  attractiveness, in terms of how much infants,
  children, and adults like them, and in terms of
  how much people consider them good examples of a
  face

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An Adaptationist Explanation

• Individuals showing population averages of traits
  likely free from aversive genetic conditions
  (e.g., mutations, deleterious recessives, etc.)
• Selection favours mate choice of individuals with
  average morphological traits

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Infant and Child Facial Appearance

• Affects adult interactions and behaviour
• Unrelated adult females punished unattractive
  children more than attractive children
• Berkowitz Frodi (1979), Dion (1972, 1974)

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Child Physical Abnormalities

• Mothers treat these children differently
• Congenital facial anomalies mothers less verbal
  and more controlling (Allen, et al. 1990)
• Cleft lip mothers smiled at, spoke less, and
  imitated less (Field Vega-Lahr 1984)
• Overall, less parental care for these children

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Langlois, et al. (1995)

• What about attractiveness in normal populations
  of children?
• Infant attractiveness and maternal attitudes and
  behaviours
• 173 mothers and their infants
• Three ethnic groups (white, African American,
  Mexican American)

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Method

• Observers coded frequency and duration of 63
  maternal and 50 infant behaviours at newborn and
  3 months
• Questionnaire assessing parenting attitudes and
  knowledge
• Colour photos of infants faces and mothers
  faces rated for attractiveness by adults

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Findings

• Mothers of attractive newborns more affectionate,
  showed greater caregiving, and more attention to
  their infants
• Mothers of unattractive newborns more likely to
  say their infants interfered with their lives,
  but did not express attitudes of rejection to
  their infants
• Maternal attractiveness had no effect on results

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Infant Phenotype and Health

• Low body weight (LBW)
• Health risks
• Infant and child health problems morbidity,
  physical, neurological, behavioural deficiencies
  (Sweet et al. 2003)
• Parental care
• Less affection, attention, general care (Mann
  1992)

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Volk et al. (2005)

• Do infant facial cues indicating LBW influence
  adults perceptions of infants and desire to give
  parental care?
• Hypothetical adoption paradigm
• Adults shown
• Unaltered faces of infants and children
• Faces digitally manipulated to simulate LBW
• Rate faces for cuteness, health, preference for
  adoption

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Stimuli

• Five childrens faces
• 18 months and 48 months
• Normal
• Morphed to represent 10 reduction in body weight

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Findings

• Normal faces rated as significantly cuter,
  healthier, and more likely to be adopted
• Adult women gave significantly higher ratings on
  all measures than men

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EP Implications

• Assessments of health and fitness made for infant
  and child faces
• Positive correlation between facial
  attractiveness and health issues

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Investment

• Gestation expensive
• Childrearing even more so
• Reluctance to expend energy on low-viable
  offspring
• Differential reproductive success and selfish
  gene theory
• Put energy into best offspring

32
Female/Male Differences

• Reproductive and rearing costs higher for females
• Volk, et al. (2005) supports this
• Females need to be more selective