Facial contrast-the difference in coloration between facial features and the surrounding skin-is an important cue for several aspects of face perception, including the perception of age and sex. However, previous work showing age declines in facial contrast has investigated only female faces, and studies demonstrating sex differences in facial contrast have only used young adult faces as stimuli. In the present work we examined whether age related declines in facial contrast are similar in both female and male faces, and whether sex differences in facial contrast are similar across the adult lifespan. In a sample of 151 male and female faces, drawn from three age groups (young adult, middleaged, older adult), we analyzed contrast around three facial features: eyebrows, eyes, and lips, in each of the three channels of CIEL*a*b* color space. We replicated the finding that feature contrasts decline with age in female faces, and found similar declines with age in facial contrast in male faces. We also found that the sex differences in luminance contrast around the facial features were present throughout the adult life span. Our findings demonstrate that age differences in facial contrast generalize to both sexes, and that sex differences in facial contrast generalize to all adult ages, indicating the general relevance of facial contrast cues. These findings also have implications for the understanding of facial beauty and of beautification practices such as makeup.

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There are many clinical reports of confabulation by schizophrenic patients. This study provides evidence of a form of confabulation by schizophrenic patients in tasks which do not include a memory component. It uses a linguistic framework to analyse the components of this confabulation.

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Previous studies have found a positive effect of cosmetics on certain behavioral measures, such as the tip given to waitresses by male patrons. These studies have employed confederates who usually wear cosmetics. We therefore sought to examine whether the positive effect found in these studies could, in part, be explained by a change in behavior. In order to test the possibility of a ‘cosmetics placebo effect’, we employed a confederate to solicit donations from passersby. On some days our confederate would not have any cosmetics applied to her face (i.e., no cosmetics condition), on some days cosmetics were pretended to be applied to her face (i.e., placebo cosmetics condition), and on other days cosmetics were actually applied to her face (i.e., cosmetics condition). In line with previous research, we found that across conditions men donated significantly more than women to our female solicitor, providing support for the ‘showoff hypothesis’, in which male generosity serves as a mating tactic. When investigating men’s donations in more detail, we found that the highest percentage of donations came in the cosmetics condition, followed by the placebo cosmetics condition, and then by no cosmetics condition. The effect of condition on donation rates, however, was not statistically significant. Our study was limited to one solicitor and one dependent variable (i.e., percentage of people approached who donated) and therefore future research would benefit from using more confederates as well as examining other behavioral measures. Given the influence of cosmetics use on so many real-world outcomes, we believe that further exploration into a possible ‘cosmetics placebo effect’ would be valuable.