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27How attractiveness affects implicit cognition 2hance bonding. However, it has not been established whether this trans,lates to mimicking the gaze direction of attractive faces. Previous studieshave reported that familiarity (Deaner et al., 2007) and facial masculinity(B. C. Jones et al., 2010; Ohlsen et al., 2013) enhance gaze cueing. It isnot known, however, whether people are following the gaze direction of anattractive other more readily than that of an unattractive other. These pre,viously observed effects of familiarity and facial masculinity might generalizeto facial attractiveness of both males and females as well.Age and sex of the perceivers might modulate biases towards attractive,ness. Previous studies on age and attractiveness perception have found thatolder people are less selective when it comes to rating faces on attractiveness:overall, they give higher attractiveness ratings than younger people (Ebneret al., 2018; Kiiski, Cullen, Clavin, & Newell, 2016). This bias also trans,lates to memory: younger people show better memory for attractive facesthan older people (Lin et al., 2020). These results are in line with the ideathat attractiveness is of reduced relevance for older people. In contrast, foryounger people it might be a salient social signal that they for example useto identify suitable mates. Similarly, attractiveness might be a more salientsignal for men than for women. This is reflected in the fact that men reportthat they find attractiveness more important when it comes to mate choicethan women (Bech-Sørensen & Pollet, 2016; Sprecher, Sullivan, & Hatfield,1994), and that men will take more effort to see attractive opposite-sex facesthan women (Hayden et al., 2007). Thus, the bias for attractive faces maydiffer between age groups and sexes.In the present study, we investigated attractiveness biases in a largewestern community sample of adults with a wide age range. We examined(a) whether people have an attentional bias towards attractive faces andunattractive faces, compared to intermediately attractive faces in a dot,probe task, (b) whether subtle differences in facial symmetry, a trait thathas been linked to attractiveness, modulates attention in a dot-probe task,and (c) whether facial attractiveness modulates gaze following in a modifiedPosner cuing task. Unattractive and asymmetrical faces are added as acontrol as they form another “extreme” category of a face type that is, likevery attractive or symmetrical faces, not very common.In Experiment 1, if participants would selectively attend to more attrac,tive faces, we expected faster RTs on trials in which the probe appearedbehind the attractive face (in the attractive vs. intermediate condition),and possibly the intermediate face (in the unattractive vs. intermediatecondition). However, if participants would selectively attend to both at,tractive and unattractive faces because both deviate from the average face,we expected faster RTs on trials in which the probe appeared behind theattractive face (in the attractive vs. intermediate condition), and unattrac,tive face (in the unattractive vs. intermediate condition). We had similarexpectations for Experiment 2: if facial symmetry is a salient social signal,we would expect participants to selectively attend to the most symmetricalface to in each condition. However, if very symmetrical and asymmetricalfaces both attract attention because they deviate from average, we would expect faster RTs on trials where the probe appears behind the symmetrizedor asymmetrized stimulus (paired with original picture). Furthermore, inExperiment 3, we expected that people would follow the gaze direction ofattractive faces particularly, which would make them respond faster on congruent trials where the probe appeared in the location the attractive facewas gazing at. In addition, in all three experiments, we expected the biasesto be more pronounced in male participants and in younger participants,since attractiveness is a more salient signal for these groups.Experiment 1MethodParticipantsExperiment 1 included 150 participants (82 females, mean age = 31.49 yearsold, SD = 12.79, ranging from 18 to 74 years old). Participants were visitorsat the Apenheul Primate Park (Apeldoorn, The Netherlands). All participants self-reported normal or corrected-to-normal vision and were heterosexual. The experimental procedures were in accordance with the Declarationof Helsinki and the study was reviewed and approved by the PsychologyEthics Committee of Leiden University (CEP17-0719/254). Participantswere not compensated for their participation.Experimental designThe experiment held a randomized within-subjects design, where independent variables comprised attractiveness category of the stimuli, participant’sage and sex. The dependent variable was RT (in ms).ApparatusThe task was performed on a touchscreen (Dell corporation, model S2240Tb,21.5 inches, resolution: 1920 ⇥ 1080 pixels) which was connected to a Delllaptop computer (model OPTIPLEX 990) and ran via E-Prime (version2.0; Psychology Software Tools). The touchscreen was located in a public,but quiet corner of an indoor visitor enclosure of the park. To minimizepotential distractors, we set up the touchscreen on a table adjacent to a wall.Participants sat at a distance of approximately 60 cm from the touchscreen.Iliana Samara 17x24.indd 27 08-04-2024 16:34