Facial Skin Coloration Affects Perceived Health of Human Faces

Stephen, Ian D.; Smith, Miriam J.; Stirrat, Michael; Perrett, David I.

doi:10.1007/s10764-009-9380-z

Cited by 251 publications

(273 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…Although the effect of colour was weaker than that of mouth curvature, faces with more yellow coloration were judged as looking healthier. This is consistent with prior work demonstrating a reliable preference for yellowness in faces [38,45,47,61], but additionally illustrates that yellowness acts independently of adiposity and mouth curvature as a cue to health in unaltered facial images. Our findings in 2D faces highlight the influence of colour and mouth curvatures (which is likely to be perceived as subtle expression) in judgements of health in a sample of young Caucasian adults.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Perception of health from facial cues

Henderson

Holzleitner

Talamas

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Impressions of health are integral to social interactions, yet poorly understood. A review of the literature reveals multiple facial characteristics that potentially act as cues to health judgements. The cues vary in their stability across time: structural shape cues including symmetry and sexual dimorphism alter slowly across the lifespan and have been found to have weak links to actual health, but show inconsistent effects on perceived health. Facial adiposity changes over a medium time course and is associated with both perceived and actual health. Skin colour alters over a short time and has strong effects on perceived health, yet links to health outcomes have barely been evaluated. Reviewing suggested an additional influence of demeanour as a perceptual cue to health. We, therefore, investigated the association of health judgements with multiple facial cues measured objectively from two-dimensional and three-dimensional facial images. We found evidence for independent contributions of face shape and skin colour cues to perceived health. Our empirical findings: (i) reinforce the role of skin yellowness; (ii) demonstrate the utility of global face shape measures of adiposity; and (iii) emphasize the role of affect in facial images with nominally neutral expression in impressions of health.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Perception of health from facial cues

Henderson

Holzleitner

Talamas

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Further, there is some empirical evidence that people associate increased facial redness with increased apparent health (Pazda, Thorstenson, Elliot, & Perrett, 2016;Re et al, 2011;Stephen, Law Smith, Stirrat, & Perrett, 2009;Stephen, Coetzee, Law Smith, & Perrett, 2009;. Therefore, in the current research we expected that facial redness would positively influence women's perceptions of men's healthiness.…”

Section: Facial Redness Increases Men's Perceived Healthiness and Attmentioning

confidence: 83%

Facial Redness Increases Men’s Perceived Healthiness and Attractiveness

et al. 2016

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Past research has shown that peripheral and facial redness influences perceptions of attractiveness for men viewing women. The current research investigated whether a parallel effect is present when women rate men with varying facial redness. In four experiments, women judged the attractiveness of men's faces, which were presented with varying degrees of redness.We also examined perceived healthiness and other candidate variables as mediators of the redattractiveness effect. The results show that facial redness positively influences ratings of men's attractiveness. Additionally, perceived healthiness was documented as a mediator of this effect, independent of other potential mediator variables. The current research emphasizes facial coloration as an important feature of social judgments.

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“…The transform was performed according to an approximation of carotenoid coloration determined as the difference between high and low fruit and vegetable intake [10]. Previous work indicates that this manipulation increases health and attractiveness perceptions [4,5,10]. To simulate healthy skin colour, following a pilot study assessing optimal health-colour levels (see the electronic supplementary material), we altered colour by 9.4 (DE) units along the carotenoid axis by adding 8.7 units of yellowness (b* in CIELab colour-space; [4]), subtracting 2.2 units of lightness (L*) and adding 2.8 units of redness (a*) to all faces.…”

Section: (B) Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Importantly, overall skin coloration has also been shown to affect perceptions of health and attractiveness. In particular, increased skin yellowness is associated with healthier [4] and more attractive [5] appearance. This effect is thought to arise as a function of carotenoids [6,7] which, when ingested through fruit and vegetables, produce a marked increase in skin yellowness as well as minor changes in skin luminance and redness [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

It is all in the face: carotenoid skin coloration loses attractiveness outside the face

et al. 2013

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Recently, the importance of skin colour for facial attractiveness has been recognized. In particular, dietary carotenoid-induced skin colour has been proposed as a signal of health and therefore attractiveness. While perceptual results are highly consistent, it is currently not clear whether carotenoid skin colour is preferred because it poses a cue to current health condition in humans or whether it is simply seen as a more aesthetically pleasing colour, independently of skin-specific signalling properties. Here, we tested this question by comparing attractiveness ratings of faces to corresponding ratings of meaningless scrambled face images matching the colours and contrasts found in the face. We produced sets of face and non-face stimuli with either healthy (high-carotenoid coloration) or unhealthy (low-carotenoid coloration) colour and asked participants for attractiveness ratings. Results showed that, while for faces increased carotenoid coloration significantly improved attractiveness, there was no equivalent effect on perception of scrambled images. These findings are consistent with a specific signalling system of current condition through skin coloration in humans and indicate that preferences are not caused by sensory biases in observers.

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Facial Skin Coloration Affects Perceived Health of Human Faces

Cited by 251 publications

References 54 publications

Perception of health from facial cues

Perception of health from facial cues

Facial Redness Increases Men’s Perceived Healthiness and Attractiveness

It is all in the face: carotenoid skin coloration loses attractiveness outside the face

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