Discrimination of Attractiveness and Health in Men’s Faces: the Impact of Color Cues and Variation in Relation to Sex and Age of Rater

Abstract

Cues available in facial skin are used to assess mate quality in humans and non-human primates. In men, perception of skin healthiness and facial attractiveness are associated with heterozygosity at genes in the major histocompatibility complex, with potential implications for securing direct benefits through mate choice. There is, however, some debate as to the precise nature of the information available in skin that is used in health and attractiveness judgments. Here we investigate whether color cues are important in discrimination of skin healthiness and facial attractiveness in men's faces. We presented images of men judged to have attractive or unattractive faces, and healthy or less healthy skin, to independent raters in either full-color or gray-scale monochrome. Differences in ratings across these conditions indicate that hue carries additive information over that available in other skin cues (e.g. texture and tone) and that this aids discrimination of individual men's quality, especially in judgments of skin condition. We also found significant sex and age effects on discrimination. Our results are consistent with findings from other species that color cues can signal underlying quality and that sexual selection may have contributed to the evolution of color vision in primates.

Trust in AI Agent: A Systematic Review of Facial Anthropomorphic Trustworthiness for Social Robot Design

“…Various studies have been carried out to explore the effect of facial color cue and luminance on people’s social perception [ 42 , 79 ]. Numerous researches have shown that evaluations of attractiveness could be influenced by the difference in skin color and condition [ 80 ].…”

“…Regarding the judgments of trustworthiness, researchers [ 42 ] have shown that cosmetics (vs. without cosmetics) could increase facial luminance and color cue, which, in return, improved the perception of likability, attractiveness, and trustworthiness. Similarly, researchers [ 79 ] suggest that color hue could have an impact on the evaluation of attractiveness in the face and healthiness in the skin.…”

“…Age and ethnicity also work as salient factors in facial trustworthiness [ 38 , 59 , 64 , 71 , 79 ]. There is a U-shape relationship between age and trustworthiness.…”

Self-perceived Mate Value is Predicted by Biological and self-reported Indices of Health in Young Adults

“…Pound et al, 2014 ). Finally, observers’ ratings of others’ health are sometimes associated with phenotypic mate-value traits (Roberts et al, 2017 ), such as homogeneous and carotenoid skin coloration (Fink et al, 2001 , 2006 ; Henderson et al, 2017 ; Jones, 2018 ), a more masculine voice (Albert et al, 2021 ), and facial averageness (Jones, 2018 ), whereas other studies have found weak or inconsistent links (e.g., Foo et al, 2017a ).…”