Neural time course and brain sources of facial attractiveness vs. trustworthiness judgment

Abstract

Prior research has shown that the more (or less) attractive a face is judged, the more (or less) trustworthy the person is deemed and that some common neural networks are recruited during facial attractiveness and trustworthiness evaluation. To interpret the relationship between attractiveness and trustworthiness (e.g., whether perception of personal trustworthiness may depend on perception of facial attractiveness), we investigated their relative neural processing time course. An event-related potential (ERP) paradigm was used, with localization of brain sources of the scalp neural activity. Face stimuli with a neutral, angry, happy, or surprised expression were presented in an attractiveness judgment, a trustworthiness judgment, or a control (no explicit social judgment) task. Emotional facial expression processing occurred earlier (N170 and EPN, 150-290 ms post-stimulus onset) than attractiveness and trustworthiness processing (P3b, 400-700 ms). Importantly, right-central ERP (C2, C4, C6) differences reflecting discrimination between "yes" (attractive or trustworthy) and "no" (unattractive or untrustworthy) decisions occurred at least 400 ms earlier for attractiveness than for trustworthiness, in the absence of LRP motor preparation differences. Neural source analysis indicated that facial processing brain networks (e.g., LG, FG, and IPL-extending to pSTS), also right-lateralized, were involved in the discrimination time course differences. This suggests that attractiveness impressions precede and might prime trustworthiness inferences and that the neural time course differences reflect truly facial encoding processes.

Tracking cortical representations of facial attractiveness using time-resolved representational similarity analysis

“…Beyond the early representation of facial attractiveness, we show that EEG responses also carried a sustained neural attractiveness signal. These sustained effects are in line with the later modulations of facial attractiveness stressed by some EEG studies [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] . These studies may not have found earlier differences related to facial attractiveness for varied reasons: Apart from the lower sensitivity offered by univariate ERP analyses, individual studies used largely orthogonal tasks, had small sample sizes, or did not specifically look for N170 differences.…”

“…Twenty-four adults (mean age 19.8, SD 1.6; 20 female) participated in the study. This sample size was comparable with the sample sizes of previous EEG studies on facial attractiveness [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] , which tested a median of 20 participants, and an average of 24.6 participants. All participants had normal or corrected-tonormal vision.…”

“…Other studies suggest that attractiveness is first analysed during the N250 processing stage [27][28][29][30] , at the time when face identity is represented. Finally, some studies only find late ERP modulations, at the P3 stage or during later slow waves starting from around 350-400 ms [31][32][33][34][35][36][37] , suggesting that facial attractiveness is analysed during post-perceptual stages of cognitive processing.…”

Mutual influence between emotional language and inhibitory control processes. Evidence from an event‐related potential study

“…In this way, a ROI was defined as a set of at least 15 nearby solution points for which ANOVA results yielded Cue × Valence interaction effects with associated p values below .01. This strategy to define a ROI was preferred over other methods because it reduces to some extent the risk for false positive while still retaining power to detect relevant effects (for similar strategies: Beltrán et al., 2018; Bernasconi et al., 2011; Buetler et al., 2014; Calvo et al., 2018). For each ROI fulfilling this definition, a single value was obtained by computing a weighted average of the current source magnitudes of all its solution points, using as weights the result of dividing the F ‐value in each solution point by the F ‐value for the solution point showing the strongest interaction effect.…”

Attractiveness of Human Faces: Norms by Sex, Sexual Orientation, Age, Relationship Stability, and Own Attractiveness Judgements

“…Finally, FA also affects various cognitive processes, including attention (for a review, see Lindell and Lindell, 2014), memory (e.g., Wiese et al, 2014), and even has implications in brain activity (Hahn and Perrett, 2014;Siuda et al, 2015). It also seems to have a neural processing time course different from the perception of other attributes (Calvo et al, 2018).…”