attractiveness preferences
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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. Historical Assumptions. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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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
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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
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Origins of Attractiveness Preferences
• Through extensive cultural input
• Learning processes (operant conditioning, observational)
• Preferences shouldn’t become apparent until age 3-5 years
• “Eye of the beholder” theory
• However, lack of empirical work
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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 mother’s 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 stranger’s (Walton et al. 1992)
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Development
• 3 months– Discriminate familiar from unfamiliar faces
• 6 months– Distinguish faces by age and sex– Preferences for happy over angry faces
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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 children’s 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
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Female/Male Differences
• Reproductive and rearing costs higher for females
• Volk, et al. (2005) supports this– Females need to be more selective