Page 73 - Demo

Attractiveness modulates attention714IntroductionBeauty is an important aspect of our social environment, as reflected in the high prevalence of attractive people featured on billboards, in magazines, and on TV. The use of expressive and almost perfectly symmetrical faces is meant to attract our attention. This choice is reasonable, given that the preference for attractive faces is widespread, expressed in some aspects of daily life (Langlois et al., 2000) and already present in newborn infants (Damon, Mottier, et al., 2017). Relatively speaking, attractive people enjoy more societal privileges (Little, Jones, et al., 2011), are assigned positive personality traits (Dion et al., 1972; Griffin & Langlois, 2006), and can choose from a greater pool of potential mates (Karraker et al., 2017). In addition, attractiveness might be positively associated with health (Nedelec & Beaver, 2014; Shackelford & Larsen, 1999; but see Cai et al., 2019). Thus, attractiveness serves as an important cue that can bias social decision making. In the current article, we investigate whether attractive and symmetrical faces modulate attention more readily than unattractive and asymmetrical faces, as well as whether attractive faces enhance gaze cuing 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 that attractive faces capture and hold our attention (Lindell & Lindell, 2014). Being able to readily detect an attractive potential mate and interpret their emotions, 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 et al., 2013). Whether attractive faces attract attention for these reasons or, alternatively, because they stand out and are oddballs in the environment is unclear from previous studies (Ma et al., 2019; Ma, Zhao, et al., 2015). These studies have established that attention is modulated by attractive faces relative to intermediately attractive faces. However, it is possible that unattractive 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 how attractiveness mediates perception of variant facial cues, such as gaze, has received relatively little attention, even though this has been investigated for other more subtle facial characteristics, such as familiarity (Deaner et al., 2007) and dominance (Jones et al., 2010; Ohlsen et al., 2013).Tom Roth.indd 71 08-01-2024 10:41