Face Attractiveness versus Artistic Beauty in Art Portraits: A Behavioral Study.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Schulz K
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5743918 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Preference for phenotypic similarity in assortative mating may be influenced by either a preference for self-similarity or parent-similarity. The aim of the current study was to assess whether people's preference in face attractiveness is influenced by resemblance to the opposite sex parent's face (parental phenotype) or their own face (self-based phenotype or "self-imprinting"). We used computerized image manipulations of facial photographs of participants, their mothers and fathers. The original photographs were combined with 78% of the participants' opposite sex prototype face (i.e., male and female prototypes made from equal contributions of a hundred faces), creating morphs where the contribution from the familiar faces went unnoticed. Female and male participants ranked these images together with the opposite-sex prototype different familiar morphs. Each participant did the same for the morphs generated with other same-sex participants' faces and of their parents. We found that the female participants preferred the self-based morphs to the prototype faces. Male participants showed a general tendency towards self-referential standard. Parental face morphs were ranked low in attractiveness, which may be accounted for by the age difference of the faces blended into the self-based versus parental face morphs, since we used present-time photographs of both the participants and their parents.
| S-EPMC4178458 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Although creativity is attractive in a potential mate, it is unclear (i) whether the effects of creativity on attractiveness generalize to other social contexts and (ii) whether creativity has equivalent effects on men's and women's attractiveness. As social knowledge of creativity may either enhance or 'offset' the appeal of social partners who differ in physical attractiveness, three repeated measures experiments were conducted to directly address these issues. Here, participants rated a series of face-text pairs for attractiveness on trials that differed in one of four combinations of facial attractiveness (attractive and less attractive) and creativity (creative and less creative), rating story-tellers in two experiments (short interpretations of an identical painting) and creative ideas in a further experiment (alternative uses for an everyday object). Regardless of the sex of the judge, creativity and facial attractiveness had independent effects on men's overall attractiveness (initial experiment) and, in further experiments, more substantial effects on the attractiveness of men with less attractive faces than men with attractive faces (when using a different measure of creativity) and specific effects on the attractiveness of individuals with less attractive faces (when using different face stimuli). Collectively, across three experiments, these findings suggest that creativity may compensate for putative cues to lower biological 'quality' and that the benefits of creativity to social groups more generally enhance attraction to creative men (in two experiments) and creative men and women (one experiment). More broadly, the data suggest that species can integrate knowledge of cognitive intelligence with visual cues to biological 'quality' to facilitate mate and/or ally choice.
| S-EPMC5414251 | biostudies-literature
Project description:This study presents the results of a receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis to evaluate response to cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) for patients with bulimia nervosa (BN), delivered via telemedicine (TV-CBT) or face-to-face (FTF-CBT).Data were gathered on 116 adults treated with CBT for BN. Response to treatment (i.e., percent reduction in binge eating and purging behavior) were examined at weeks two, four, six, and eight. ROC analysis was completed to predict abstinence at end of treatment (EOT) as well as 3-month and 1-year follow-up for the entire sample and by treatment group (TV-CBT versus FTF-CBT).ROC analyses revealed that abstinence at EOT and 1-year follow-up was predicted by percent reduction in binge eating behavior whereas abstinence at 3-month follow-up was predicted by percent reduction in purging behavior. Results showed differences in predictors of treatment response when ROC analyses were completed for the entire sample and by treatment group.Results suggest that evaluating percent reduction in binge eating and purging at weeks two, four, six, and eight of treatment is a clinically useful tool for predicting treatment response at EOT, 3-month, and 1-year follow-up.
| S-EPMC5558888 | biostudies-other
Project description:Recent neuroimaging advances have allowed visual experience to be reconstructed from patterns of brain activity. While neural reconstructions have ranged in complexity, they have relied almost exclusively on retinotopic mappings between visual input and activity in early visual cortex. However, subjective perceptual information is tied more closely to higher-level cortical regions that have not yet been used as the primary basis for neural reconstructions. Furthermore, no reconstruction studies to date have reported reconstructions of face images, which activate a highly distributed cortical network. Thus, we investigated (a) whether individual face images could be accurately reconstructed from distributed patterns of neural activity, and (b) whether this could be achieved even when excluding activity within occipital cortex. Our approach involved four steps. (1) Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to identify components that efficiently represented a set of training faces. (2) The identified components were then mapped, using a machine learning algorithm, to fMRI activity collected during viewing of the training faces. (3) Based on activity elicited by a new set of test faces, the algorithm predicted associated component scores. (4) Finally, these scores were transformed into reconstructed images. Using both objective and subjective validation measures, we show that our methods yield strikingly accurate neural reconstructions of faces even when excluding occipital cortex. This methodology not only represents a novel and promising approach for investigating face perception, but also suggests avenues for reconstructing 'offline' visual experiences-including dreams, memories, and imagination-which are chiefly represented in higher-level cortical areas.
| S-EPMC4028096 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Images of European female and male faces were digitally processed to generate spatial frequency (SF) filtered images containing only a narrow band of visual information within the Fourier spectrum. The original unfiltered images and four SF filtered images (low, medium-low, medium-high and high) were then paired in trials that kept constant SF band and face gender and participants made a forced-choice decision about the more attractive among the two faces. In this way, we aimed at identifying those specific SF bands where forced-choice preferences corresponded best to forced-choice judgements made when viewing the natural, broadband, facial images. We found that aesthetic preferences dissociated across SFs and face gender, but similarly for participants from Asia (Japan) and Europe (Norway). Specifically, preferences when viewing SF filtered images were best related to the preference with the broadband face images when viewing the highest filtering band for the female faces (about 48-77 cycles per face). In contrast, for the male faces, the medium-low SF band (about 11-19 cpf) related best to choices made with the natural facial images. Eye tracking provided converging evidence for the above, gender-related, SF dissociations. We suggest greater aesthetic relevance of the mobile and communicative parts for the female face and, conversely, of the rigid, structural, parts for the male face for facial aesthetics.
| S-EPMC6959585 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Face attractiveness can influence memory for previously seen faces. This effect has been shown to differ for young and older perceivers. Two parallel studies examined the moderation of both the age of the face and the age of the perceiver on the relationship between facial attractiveness and face memory. Study 1 comprised 29 young and 31 older participants; Study 2 comprised 25 young and 24 older participants. In both studies, participants completed an incidental face encoding and a surprise old/new recognition test with young and older faces that varied in face attractiveness. Face attractiveness affected memory for young but not older faces. In addition, young but not older perceivers showed a linear effect of facial attractiveness on memory for young faces, while both young and older perceivers showed a quadratic effect on memory for young faces. These findings extend previous work by demonstrating that the effect of facial attractiveness on face memory is a function of both the age of the perceiver and the age of the face. Factors that could account for such moderations of face and perceiver age on the associations between face attractiveness and face memory are discussed (e.g. age differences in social goals and face similarity/distinctiveness).
| S-EPMC7237279 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Face perception and recognition are important processes for social interaction and communication among humans, so understanding how faces are mentally represented and processed has major implications. At the same time, faces are just some of the many stimuli that we encounter in our everyday lives. Therefore, more general theories of how we represent objects might also apply to faces. Contemporary research on the mental representation of faces has centered on two competing theoretical frameworks that arose from more general categorization research: prototype-based face representation and exemplar-based face representation. Empirically distinguishing between these frameworks is difficult and neither one has been ruled out. In this paper, we advance this area of research in three ways. First, we introduce two additional frameworks for mental representation of categories, varying abstraction and ideal representation, which have not been applied to face perception and recognition before. Second, we fit formal computational models of all four of these theories to human perceptual judgments of the typicality and attractiveness (a strong correlate of typicality) of 100 young adult Caucasian female faces, with the models expressed within a face space derived from facial similarity judgments via multidimensional scaling. Third, we predict the perceived typicality and attractiveness of the faces using these models and compare the predictive performance of each to the empirical data. We found that of all four models, the ideal representation model provided the best account of perceived typicality and attractiveness for the present set of faces, although all models showed discrepancies from the empirical data. These findings demonstrate the relevance of mental categorization processes for representing faces.
| S-EPMC9899519 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectivePeople differ in whether they understand graphical or numerical representations of statistical information better. However, assessing these skills is often not feasible when deciding which representation to select or use. This study investigates whether people choose the representation they understand better, whether this choice can improve risk comprehension, and whether results are influenced by participants' skills (graph literacy and numeracy).MethodsIn an experiment, 160 participants received information about the benefits and side effects of painkillers using either a numerical or a graphical representation. In the "no choice" condition, the representation was randomly assigned to each participant. In the "choice" condition, participants could select the representation they would like to receive. The study assessed gist and verbatim knowledge (immediate comprehension and recall), accessibility of the information, attractiveness of the representation, as well as graph literacy and numeracy.ResultsIn the "choice" condition, most (62.5%) chose the graphical format, yet there was no difference in graph literacy or numeracy (nor age or gender) between people who chose the graphical or the numerical format. Whereas choice slightly increased verbatim knowledge, it did not improve gist or overall knowledge compared with random assignment. However, participants who chose a representation rated the representation as more attractive, and those who chose graphs rated them as more accessible than those without a choice.LimitationsThe sample consisted of highly educated undergraduate students with higher graph literacy than the general population. The task was inconsequential for participants in terms of their health.ConclusionsWhen people can choose between representations, they fail to identify what they comprehend better but largely base that choice on how attractive the representation is for them.HighlightsPeople differ systematically in whether they understand graphical or numerical representations of statistical information better. However, assessing these underlying skills to get the right representation to the right people is not feasible in practice. A simple and efficient method to achieve this could be to let people choose among representations themselves.However, our study showed that allowing participants to choose a representation (numerical v. graphical) did not improve overall or gist knowledge compared with determining the representation randomly, even though it did slightly improve verbatim knowledge.Rather, participants largely chose the representation they found more attractive. Most preferred the graphical representation, including those with low graph literacy.It would therefore be important to develop graphical representations that are not only attractive but also comprehensible even for people with low graph literacy.
| S-EPMC10625725 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC3014561 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The link between human ocular morphology and attractiveness, especially in the context of its potential adaptive function, is an underexplored area of research. In our study, we examined the association between facial attractiveness and three sexually dimorphic measures of ocular morphology in White Europeans: the sclera size index, width-to-height ratio, and relative iris luminance. Sixty participants (30 women) assessed the attractiveness of the opposite-sex photographs of 50 men and 50 women. Our results show that in both men and women, none of the three measures was linked to the opposite sex ratings of facial attractiveness. We conclude that those ocular morphology measures may play a limited role in human mate preferences.
| S-EPMC10079083 | biostudies-literature