Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder: The Appraisal of Facial
Attractiveness and Its Relation to Conscious Awareness. Myron
Tsikandilakis, Persefoni Bali, Peter Chapman. Perception, December 19,
2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006618813035
Abstract: Previous
research suggests that facial attractiveness relies on features such as
symmetry, averageness and above-average sexual dimorphic
characteristics. Due to the evolutionary and sociobiological value of
these characteristics, it has been suggested that attractiveness can be
processed in the absence of conscious awareness. This raises the
possibility that attractiveness can also be appraised without conscious
awareness. In this study, we addressed this hypothesis. We presented
neutral and emotional faces that were rated high, medium and low for
attractiveness during a pilot experimental stage. We presented these
faces for 33.33 ms with backwards masking to a black and white pattern
for 116.67 ms and measured face-detection and emotion-discrimination
performance, and attractiveness ratings. We found that
high-attractiveness faces were detected and discriminated more
accurately and rated higher for attractiveness compared with other
appearance types. A Bayesian analysis of signal detection performance
indicated that faces were not processed significantly at-chance. Further
assessment revealed that correct detection (hits) of a presented face
was a necessary condition for reporting higher ratings for
high-attractiveness faces. These findings suggest that the appraisal of
attractiveness requires conscious awareness.
Keywords attractiveness, masking, awareness
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