The Science and Psychology of Beauty

Cutler, Vanessa J.

doi:10.1002/9781119680116.ch2

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 87 publications

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“…From an evolutionary perspective, facial attractiveness judgment is correlated with health and mate selection [ 5 ]. Facial attractiveness is determined by biologically evolutionarily important characteristics, such as symmetry, average and above average sexual dimorphic characteristics [ 5 , 6 , 7 ], skin condition [ 8 ], and age [ 7 ], although there was a debate about averageness suggesting that highly attractive facial shapes were not average [ 9 ]. Although facial attractiveness has been extensively studied in conscious perception, it is still not clear whether facial attractiveness can be processed below the threshold of awareness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Mechanisms of the Conscious and Subliminal Processing of Facial Attractiveness

2023

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the neural activity evoked by facial attractiveness in conscious and subliminal conditions. The 41 participants judged facial attractiveness in a conscious condition and a subliminal condition (backward masking paradigm). The event-related potential (ERP) analysis indicated that in the conscious condition, more attractive faces elicited a longer N1 (80–120 ms) latency than less attractive faces. Moreover, more attractive female faces elicited a larger late positive component (LPC) (350–550 ms) amplitude than less attractive female faces. In the subliminal condition, more attractive faces elicited a longer P1 (140–180 ms) latency than less attractive faces. The present study demonstrated that more attractive faces evoked different early-stage ERPs from that evoked by less attractive faces in both conscious and subliminal conditions. However, the processing of facial attractiveness is obviously weakened in the subliminal condition.

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