Facial Contrast Is a Cross-Cultural Cue for Perceiving Age

Abstract

Age is a fundamental social dimension and a youthful appearance is of importance for many individuals, perhaps because it is a relevant predictor of aspects of health, facial attractiveness and general well-being. We recently showed that facial contrast—the color and luminance difference between facial features and the surrounding skin—is age-related and a cue to age perception of Caucasian women. Specifically, aspects of facial contrast decrease with age in Caucasian women, and Caucasian female faces with higher contrast look younger (Porcheron et al., 2013). Here we investigated faces of other ethnic groups and raters of other cultures to see whether facial contrast is a cross-cultural youth-related attribute. Using large sets of full face color photographs of Chinese, Latin American and black South African women aged 20–80, we measured the luminance and color contrast between the facial features (the eyes, the lips, and the brows) and the surrounding skin. Most aspects of facial contrast that were previously found to decrease with age in Caucasian women were also found to decrease with age in the other ethnic groups. Though the overall pattern of changes with age was common to all women, there were also some differences between the groups. In a separate study, individual faces of the 4 ethnic groups were perceived younger by French and Chinese participants when the aspects of facial contrast that vary with age in the majority of faces were artificially increased, but older when they were artificially decreased. Altogether these findings indicate that facial contrast is a cross-cultural cue to youthfulness. Because cosmetics were shown to enhance facial contrast, this work provides some support for the notion that a universal function of cosmetics is to make female faces look younger.

Differential effects of makeup on perceived age

“…Facial contrastthe colour and luminance contrast between the facial features and the surrounding skin is positively associated with attractiveness (Russell, 2003;St€ ormer & Alvarez, 2016) and is increased through typical makeup use (Etcoff et al, 2011;Jones et al, 2015;Russell, 2009;Stephen & McKeegan, 2010). Aspects of facial contrast are sexually dimorphic, being greater in female than male faces (Jones et al, 2015;Russell, 2009;Russell, Kramer, & Jones, 2017), while other aspects decline with age and are used as cues for perceiving age and health from the face (Porcheron, Mauger, & Russell, 2013;Porcheron et al, 2017;Russell et al, 2016Russell et al, , 2017. Theorists have proposed that facial feature size mediates the effect of makeup on attractiveness (Bruce & Young, 1986;Morris, 1977Morris, , 2002Perrett, 2010;Zebrowitz, 1997), and recent work has shown that makeup does indeed make the eyes and eyebrows appear larger (Morikawa, Matsushita, Tomita, & Yamanami, 2015).…”

A variety of processes that affect the perception of skin aging

“…According to current research [13][14][15][16] and universal opinion, skin color definitely affects perceived age. Fink et al, in a study of 170 British women, randomly showed their pictures to participants.…”

A role for contrast gain control in skin appearance

“…The full-face images were manipulated using Adobe Photoshop CS4 in Lab color mode to create versions with increased or decreased facial contrast. The set was designed to imitate the differences in facial contrast between older and younger adult faces (Porcheron et al, 2013;Porcheron et al, 2017). This was achieved by modifying the luminance and color of the eyebrows, eyes, and lips while leaving the rest of the face-including the skin-unchanged.…”

“…In particular, horizontally oriented contrast (Dakin & Watt, 2009;Goffaux & Dakin, 2010;Pachai, Sekuler, & Bennett, 2013) around the eye/eyebrow and lip regions (Ohayon, Freiwald, & Tsao, 2012;Sinha, 2002) has been shown to be broadly important for face processing and the selectivity of face-specific neurons. The contrast between facial features and the surrounding skin, termed facial contrast, is a cue for perceiving age (Porcheron, Mauger, & Russell, 2013;Porcheron et al, 2017), sex (Jones, Russell, & Ward, 2015;Russell, 2009), attractiveness (Russell, 2003;Störmer & Alvarez, 2016), and health (Russell et al, 2016) from the face, and is modified by typical applications of makeup (Etcoff, Stock, Haley, Vickery, & House, 2011;Jones et al, 2015;Russell, 2009;Stephen & McKeegan, 2010). These face-specific patterns of contrast are related to the distinctive midrange band of spatial frequencies that underlie face perception (Keil, 2008;Näsänen, 1999).…”