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44Chapter 2faces to modulate implicit attention. It is important to note that somerecent studies have questioned the evolutionary importance of facial symmetry. For example, not all studies show that symmetry correlates withhealth (Pound et al., 2014), and symmetrical faces are more attractive evenafter removing symmetry information by showing only half of the face. Thisindicates that other factors that are correlated with symmetry may causethe high attractiveness ratings for symmetrical faces (Scheib, Gangestad, &Thornhill, 1999). Furthermore, recent data-driven approaches to facial attractiveness have cast doubt on the importance of symmetry (Holzleitner etal., 2019; A. Jones & Jaeger, 2019). For example, Jones and Jaeger (2019)recently studied the differential effects of facial characteristics on the perception of attractiveness. They concluded that symmetry of facial shape isnot informative when it comes to predicting attractiveness. Instead, theyconclude that shape averageness is a more accurate predictor of attractiveness. Therefore, based on this perspective, we suggest that future researchmight study attentional biases towards averaged versus non-averaged faces.Our third key result, that gaze cueing was not modulated by facial attractiveness, was not in line with our prediction. We did find a strong cueingeffect, but this effect was seemingly unaffected by attractiveness category ofthe stimuli, as participants did not respond faster on congruent trials inthe Posner paradigm when attractive faces were displayed. Our findingscontradict previous literature describing the effect of evolutionarily relevantfacial characteristics on gaze cueing (Deaner et al., 2007; Hori et al., 2005;Ohlsen et al., 2013). Given that attractiveness is such an important criterion for partner choice, it is surprising that gaze cueing was not modulatedby facial attractiveness. One likely explanation is methodological: Jonesand colleagues (2010) found a significant effect of facial dominance on gazecueing when side-looking stimuli were presented for 200ms, but not whenthey were presented for 400ms or 800ms. On the contrary, in our study,we used a presentation duration of 300ms. Thus, it might be the case thatthe subtle effect of facial attractiveness on reflexive gaze following manifestsitself only at very short presentation durations. Furthermore, the currentgaze cueing paradigm allows only for indirect inference of the isolated effectof attractiveness on gaze cueing. However, this paradigm does not provideany information about how a person would behave in a situation where people varying in attractiveness look in different directions. In this scenario,would the person shift their gaze in congruence with the most attractiveperson, or not? To answer this question, we believe that an approach thatcombines the dot-probe and gaze cueing paradigm has its merits. Such aparadigm would help to further elucidate the link between attractivenessand gaze cueing.One important limitation of our study is the lack of data on motivation of the participants with regard to mate searching. This could possiblyexplain the null effects that we found in Experiment 2 and 3. PreviousIliana Samara 17x24.indd 44 08-04-2024 16:35