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23How attractiveness affects implicit cognition 2AbstractAttractiveness is an important aspect of human society. Attractive peopleenjoy multiple societal privileges and are assigned positive personality traits,and both men and women find attractiveness important when it comes topartner choice. Our universal preference for beauty might be reflected inimplicit perception of human faces. In a series of three studies, we useBayesian methods to investigate whether attractiveness or attractive traitsmodulate implicit attention and gaze cueing in a large community sample.In Experiment 1, we used a dot-probe task to measure attentional bias to,wards attractive faces. The results demonstrate that participants reactedfaster when the probe appeared behind an attractive face but not when itappeared behind an unattractive face, suggesting that specifically attrac,tive faces captured attention. In Experiment 2, we used a similar method totest whether facial symmetry, an often-mentioned characteristic of attractivefaces, modulated attention. However, we found no such effect. In Experi,ment 3, we used a gaze-cuing task to test whether participants were morelikely to follow the gaze of attractive faces, but no such effect was found. Toconclude, attractiveness affects our implicit attention toward faces, but thisdoes not seem to extend to gaze cueing.Based on:Roth, T. S., Du, X., Samara, I., & Kret, M. E. (2021). Attractiveness mod,ulates attention but does not enhance gaze cueing. Evolutionary BehavioralSciences. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000265IntroductionBeauty is an important aspect of our social environment, as reflected in thehigh prevalence of attractive people featured on billboards, in magazines,and on television. The use of expressive and almost perfectly symmetricalfaces is meant to attract our attention. This choice is reasonable, given thatthe preference for attractive faces is widespread, expressed in some aspectsof daily life (Langlois et al., 2000), and already present in new born infants(Damon, Mottier, Méary, & Pascalis, 2017). Relatively speaking, attractivepeople enjoy more societal privileges (A. C. Little, Jones, & DeBruine, 2011),are assigned positive personality traits (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972;Griffin & Langlois, 2006), and can choose from a greater pool of potentialmates (Karraker, Sicinski, & Moynihan, 2017). In addition, attractivenessmight be positively associated with health (Nedelec & Beaver, 2014; Shackelford & Larsen, 1999; Cai et al., 2019). Thus, attractiveness serves as animportant cue that can bias social decision making. In the current article,we investigate whether attractive and symmetrical faces modulate attentionmore readily than unattractive and asymmetrical faces, as well as whetherattractive faces enhance gaze cueing more strongly than unattractive faces.Facial attractiveness is especially important in partner choice (Rhodes,2006; Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999), and this is evident from the fact thatattractive faces capture and hold our attention (Lindell & Lindell, 2014).Being able to readily detect an attractive potential mate and interpret theiremotions, intentions, and focus of attention might convey evolutionary benefits. Namely, it allows for the selection of suitable partners from the environment (Maner & Ackerman, 2015) and consequently bond with them (Müller,Van Leeuwen, Van Baaren, Bekkering, & Dijksterhuis, 2013). Whether attractive faces attract attention for these reasons or alternatively, becausethey stand out and are oddballs in the environment, is unclear from previous studies (Y. Ma, Zhao, Tu, & Zheng, 2015; Y. Ma, Xue, & Tu, 2019)).These studies have established that attention is modulated by attractivefaces relative to intermediately attractive faces. However, it is possible thatunattractive faces might modulate attention in a similar fashion. Therefore,it is necessary to incorporate both attractive and unattractive faces to elucidate how this attentional bias might arise. Moreover, the topic of howattractiveness mediates perception of variant facial cues, such as gaze, hasreceived relatively little attention, even though this has been investigated forother more subtle facial characteristics, such as familiarity (Deaner, Shepherd, & Platt, 2007) and dominance (B. C. Jones et al., 2010; Ohlsen, vanZoest, & van Vugt, 2013).Given our strong preference for attractive individuals, it is not surprisingthat beauty modulates attention. Indeed, humans automatically attend toattractive faces of opposite-sex individuals (Lindell & Lindell, 2014). Previous research has shown that this attentional bias is evident in both sustainedIliana Samara 17x24.indd 23 08-04-2024 16:34