Robustness of the aging effect of smiling against vertical facial orientation

Abstract

Background: Previous studies have shown that the association between smiling and youth is a misconception; smiling faces have been estimated to be older than neutral faces. Previous studies have indicated that this aging effect of smiling (AES) is due to eye wrinkles caused by the facial action of smiling. However, whether holistic processing for facial expressions is involved in AES has not been investigated. The present study aimed to clarify these issues. Methods: Participants were recruited to participate in an online experiment that had a 3 (facial expression: smiling/neutral/surprised) × 2 (facial orientation: upright/inverted) mixed design. Participants were presented with an upright or inverted face for each expression (neutral, smiling, and surprised) and were asked to estimate the individual’s age. Results: In total, 104 participants were included in the analysis. The results show that smiling faces were estimated to be older than neutral faces, whereas there was no significant difference between upright and inverted faces. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that direct age estimation is not dependent on holistic processing.

Biases in human perception of facial age are present and more exaggerated in current AI technology

“…As in the case of the AIs, each photo was presented separately, and participants were asked to type their two-digit response on the keyboard. The only substantial difference in the design was that in order to prevent top-down memory influences for human participants, the stimulus set was counterbalanced so that each participant was presented with only one photo (smiling or neutral) of the same person 5,[7][8][9][10] . This concern was irrelevant in the case of AIs, because none of them stored previously presented data or relied on previous responses for age estimations, which were based entirely on the presented image.…”