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Chapter 240underlying mechanism. Furthermore, the roles of facial distinctiveness, sex, and age require further attention to obtain a better understanding of the interplay between attractiveness and recognition memory.EffortIn addition to attentional and memory processing, some studies have investigated the motivational drive elicited by attractiveness by measuring how much effort people exert to see attractive faces. Building on the idea that the desire to achieve a goal and the emotional response when accomplishing it are distinct processes, Berridge & Robinson (2003) formulated a theory that integrates the neurological and psychological components of motivation. They distinguish between the desirability of reward and the emotional experience of reward, where desirability is defined by the extent to which a particular reward is desired (“wanting”), and emotional experience refers to the subjective experience of pleasure or pain (“liking”). While “wanting” is expressed via the mesolimbic dopamine system, “liking” is expressed via opioid hotspots (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2015). This theory has also been applied to the study of attractiveness; while “wanting” can be tested by employing an effort task, “liking” is reflected in explicit ratings of attractiveness (Levy et al., 2008). Typically, participants who engage in an effort task can control the presentation duration of a picture by pressing specific keyboard keys. More specifically, they can choose to increase or reduce how long they view a specific image by exerting effort through pressing the corresponding keys. If they work to increase the presentation duration of an image, this image has a high motivational salience. In a seminal study, Aharon et al. (2001) combined an effort task with attractiveness ratings and functional brain imaging. The authors found that men exerted effort to look longer at attractive female faces but not attractive male faces. In line with the behavioral responses, viewing attractive female faces was associated with increased activation of the nucleus accumbens, a brain area associated with rewards (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2015). Extending these findings, Hayden et al. (2007) examined the influence of participants’ sex on the relationship between attractiveness and effort. The authors recruited both male and female participants and presented them with a series of opposite-sex faces that ranged in attractiveness. Their results showed that although men and women exerted more effort to see attractive than unattractive oppositesex faces, the effect was significantly stronger for male participants. Crucially, this Tom Roth.indd 40 08-01-2024 10:41