The neural correlates of beauty comparison

Abstract

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How attractive someone is perceived to be depends on the individual or cultural standards to which this person is compared. But although comparisons play a central role in the way people judge the appearance of others, the brain processes underlying attractiveness comparisons remain unknown. In the present experiment, we tested the hypothesis that attractiveness comparisons rely on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms as comparisons of simple nonsocial magnitudes such as size. We recorded brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants compared the beauty or height of two women or two dogs. Our data support the hypothesis of a common process underlying these different types of comparisons. First, we demonstrate that the distance effect characteristic of nonsocial comparisons also holds for attractiveness comparisons. Behavioral results indicated, for all our comparisons, longer response times for near than far distances. Second, the neural correlates of these distance effects overlapped in a frontoparietal network known for its involvement in processing simple nonsocial quantities. These results provide evidence for overlapping processes in the comparison of physical attractiveness and nonsocial magnitudes.

Electrophysiological evidence of perceived sexual attractiveness for human female bodies varying in waist-to-hip ratio

“…Perception of faces and bodies are known to affect different specialized brain occipito-temporo-parietal pathways (Peelen & Downing 2007;Schwarzlose, Baker, & Kanwisher, 2005), and the attractiveness of both these categories has been shown to activate regions involved in reward networks, corresponding to the orbito-frontal cortex (OFC) (Aharon et al, 2001;Kedia, Mussweiler, Mullins, & Linden, 2014;Winston, O'Doherty, Kilner, Perrett, & Dolan, 2007). This specific area receives the majority of its visual input from the ventral stream and plays a fundamental role in the reinforcement mechanism for the cerebral reward centres (Rolls & Grabenhorst, 2008).…”

Immediate relativity: EEG reveals early engagement of comparison in social information processing.

“…For instance, intelligence comparisons have been found to activate medial frontal, orbitofrontal and limbic areas as well as the temporoparietal junction (Lindner, Hundhammer, Ciaramidaro, Linden, & Mussweiler, 2008) while attractiveness and social status comparisons were shown to engage a fronto-parietal network (Chiao et al, 2009;Kedia et al, 2014).…”

Face Identification Task

“…For instance, intelligence comparisons have been found to activate medial frontal, orbitofrontal and limbic areas as well as the temporoparietal junction (Lindner, Hundhammer, Ciaramidaro, Linden, & Mussweiler, 2008) while attractiveness and social status comparisons were shown to engage a fronto-parietal network (Chiao et al, 2009;Kedia et al, 2014).…”