Facial cues of dominance modulate the short-term gaze-cuing effect in human observers.

Responding appropriately to gaze cues is essential for fluent social interaction, playing a crucial role in social learning, collaboration, threat assessment and understanding others' intentions. Previous research has shown that responses to gaze cues can be studied by investigating the gaze-cuing effect (i.e. the tendency for observers to respond more quickly to targets in locations that were cued by others' gaze than to uncued targets). A recent study demonstrating that macaques demonstrate larger gaze-cuing effects when viewing dominant conspecifics than when viewing subordinate conspecifics suggests that cues of dominance modulate the gaze-cuing effect in at least one primate species. Here, we show a similar effect of facial cues associated with dominance on gaze cuing in human observers: at short viewing times, observers demonstrated a greater cuing effect for gaze cues from masculinized (i.e. dominant) faces than from feminized (i.e. subordinate) faces. Moreover, this effect of facial masculinity on gaze cuing decreased as viewing time was increased, suggesting that the effect is driven by involuntary responses. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms that underpin reflexive gaze cuing evolved to be sensitive to facial cues of others' dominance, potentially because such differential gaze cuing promoted desirable outcomes from encounters with dominant individuals.

Emotional expression modulates perceived gaze direction.

Gaze perception is an important social skill, as it portrays information about what another person is attending to. Gaze direction has been shown to affect interpretation of emotional expression. Here the authors investigate whether the emotional facial expression has a reciprocal influence on interpretation of gaze direction. In a forced-choice yes-no task, participants were asked to judge whether three faces expressing different emotions (anger, fear, happiness, and neutral) in different viewing angles were looking at them or not. Happy faces were more likely to be judged as looking at the observer than were angry, fearful, or neutral faces. Angry faces were more often judged as looking at the observer than were fearful and neutral expressions. These findings are discussed on the background of approach and avoidance orientation of emotions and of the self-referential positivity bias.

Q-cgi: new techniques to assess variation in perception applied to facial attractiveness.

We present novel methods for assessing variation in the perception of subjective cues based on a fusion of Q-methodology with computer graphics techniques. Participants first Q-sort face stimuli based upon a subjective quality; a randomization-based statistic is then calculated to test whether groups of participants differ in their perception. Computer graphics are then used to extract and illustrate the differences in the manner which participants sorted so that the differences can be quantified. As a demonstration, the technique is applied to investigate the effects of prospective relationship duration and of sexual restrictiveness on the characteristics which participants find attractive in photographs of opposite-sex faces. Results show that in a naturally varying set of faces, female participants prefer facial cues related to masculinity for short-term relationships, whereas characteristics related to positive personality attributes are preferred for long-term relationships. For short-term relationships, male participants appear to prefer more feminine, youthful faces. Preferences of individuals with less restricted sexual strategy paralleled short-term preferences in that more feminine female faces and more masculine male faces were preferred.

Facial Shape Analysis Identifies Valid Cues to Aspects of Physiological Health in Caucasian, Asian, and African Populations.

Facial cues contribute to attractiveness, including shape cues such as symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism. These cues may represent cues to objective aspects of physiological health, thereby conferring an evolutionary advantage to individuals who find them attractive. The link between facial cues and aspects of physiological health is therefore central to evolutionary explanations of attractiveness. Previously, studies linking facial cues to aspects of physiological health have been infrequent, have had mixed results, and have tended to focus on individual facial cues in isolation. Geometric morphometric methodology (GMM) allows a bottom-up approach to identifying shape correlates of aspects of physiological health. Here, we apply GMM to facial shape data, producing models that successfully predict aspects of physiological health in 272 Asian, African, and Caucasian faces - percentage body fat (21.0% of variance explained), body mass index (BMI; 31.9%) and blood pressure (BP; 21.3%). Models successfully predict percentage body fat and blood pressure even when controlling for BMI, suggesting that they are not simply measuring body size. Predicted values of BMI and BP, but not percentage body fat, correlate with health ratings. When asked to manipulate the shape of faces along the physiological health variable axes (as determined by the models), participants reduced predicted BMI, body fat and (marginally) BP, suggesting that facial shape provides a valid cue to aspects of physiological health.

Correlated preferences for facial masculinity and ideal or actual partner's masculinity.

Studies of women's preferences for male faces have variously reported preferences for masculine faces, preferences for feminine faces and no effect of masculinity-femininity on male facial attractiveness. It has been suggested that these apparently inconsistent findings are, at least partly, due to differences in the methods used to manipulate the masculinity of face images or individual differences in attraction to facial cues associated with youth. Here, however, we show that women's preferences for masculinity manipulated in male faces using techniques similar to the three most widely used methods are positively inter-related. We also show that women's preferences for masculine male faces are positively related to ratings of the masculinity of their actual partner and their ideal partner. Correlations with partner masculinity were independent of real and ideal partner age, which were not associated with facial masculinity preference. Collectively, these findings suggest that variability among studies in their findings for women's masculinity preferences reflects individual differences in attraction to masculinity rather than differences in the methods used to manufacture stimuli, and are important for the interpretation of previous and future studies of facial masculinity.

Facial attractiveness judgements reflect learning of parental age characteristics.

Mate preferences are shaped by infant experience of parental characteristics in a wide variety of species. Similar processes in humans may lead to physical similarity between parents and mates, yet this possibility has received little attention. The age of parents is one salient physical characteristic that offspring may attend to. The current study used computer-graphic faces to examine how preferences for age in faces were influenced by parental age. We found that women born to 'old' parents (over 30) were less impressed by youth, and more attracted to age cues in male faces than women with 'young' parents (under 30). For men, preferences for female faces were influenced by their mother's age and not their father's age, but only for long-term relationships. These data indicate that judgements of facial attractiveness in humans reflect the learning of parental characteristics.

Men's facial masculinity: when (body) size matters.

Recent studies suggest that judgments of facial masculinity reflect more than sexually dimorphic shape. Here, we investigated whether the perception of masculinity is influenced by facial cues to body height and weight. We used the average differences in three-dimensional face shape of forty men and forty women to compute a morphological masculinity score, and derived analogous measures for facial correlates of height and weight based on the average face shape of short and tall, and light and heavy men. We found that facial cues to body height and weight had substantial and independent effects on the perception of masculinity. Our findings suggest that men are perceived as more masculine if they appear taller and heavier, independent of how much their face shape differs from women's. We describe a simple method to quantify how body traits are reflected in the face and to define the physical basis of psychological attributions.

Looking like a leader-facial shape predicts perceived height and leadership ability.

Judgments of leadership ability from face images predict the outcomes of actual political elections and are correlated with leadership success in the corporate world. The specific facial cues that people use to judge leadership remain unclear, however. Physical height is also associated with political and organizational success, raising the possibility that facial cues of height contribute to leadership perceptions. Consequently, we assessed whether cues to height exist in the face and, if so, whether they are associated with perception of leadership ability. We found that facial cues to perceived height had a strong relationship with perceived leadership ability. Furthermore, when allowed to manually manipulate faces, participants increased facial cues associated with perceived height in order to maximize leadership perception. A morphometric analysis of face shape revealed that structural facial masculinity was not responsible for the relationship between perceived height and perceived leadership ability. Given the prominence of facial appearance in making social judgments, facial cues to perceived height may have a significant influence on leadership selection.

Judging the health and attractiveness of female faces: is the most attractive level of facial adiposity also considered the healthiest?

Perceived facial adiposity plays an important role in perceptions of both facial attractiveness and health, but people might differentiate between the level of adiposity they find most attractive and healthy. The aim of this study was therefore to test whether or not similar levels of adiposity in faces were preferred for judgments of health and attractiveness. Fifty-three Caucasian university students were asked to make three-dimensional female faces appear as healthy and attractive as possible by changing faces along a continuum that portrays the facial adiposity change associated with a change in body mass index. Results showed that women preferred a significantly lower level of facial adiposity when judging attractiveness than when judging health, while men did not differentiate between the 'most attractive' and 'most healthy' looking level of facial adiposity. These findings are discussed in terms of the sociocultural portrayal of female body ideals and the preference for healthy individuals.

Symmetry is related to sexual dimorphism in faces: data across culture and species.

BACKGROUND: Many animals both display and assess multiple signals. Two prominently studied traits are symmetry and sexual dimorphism, which, for many animals, are proposed cues to heritable fitness benefits. These traits are associated with other potential benefits, such as fertility. In humans, the face has been extensively studied in terms of attractiveness. Faces have the potential to be advertisements of mate quality and both symmetry and sexual dimorphism have been linked to the attractiveness of human face shape. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Here we show that measurements of symmetry and sexual dimorphism from faces are related in humans, both in Europeans and African hunter-gatherers, and in a non-human primate. Using human judges, symmetry measurements were also related to perceived sexual dimorphism. In all samples, symmetric males had more masculine facial proportions and symmetric females had more feminine facial proportions. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings support the claim that sexual dimorphism and symmetry in faces are signals advertising quality by providing evidence that there must be a biological mechanism linking the two traits during development. Such data also suggests that the signalling properties of faces are universal across human populations and are potentially phylogenetically old in primates.