Judith H. Langlois

Attractive Faces Are Only Average

Scientists and philosophers have searched for centuries for a parsimonious answer to the question of what constitutes beauty. We approached this problem from both an evolutionary and information-processing rationale and predicted that faces representing the average value of the population would be consistently judged as attractive. To evaluate this hypothesis, we digitized samples of male and female faces, mathematically averaged them, and had adults judge the attractiveness of both the individual faces and the computer-generated composite images. Both male (three samples) and female (three samples) composite faces were judged as more attractive than almost all the individual faces comprising the composites. A strong linear trend also revealed that the composite faces became more attractive as more faces were entered. These data showing that attractive faces are only average are consistent with evolutionary pressures that favor characteristics close to the mean of the population and with cognitive processes that favor prototypical category members.

What Is Average and What Is Not Average About Attractive Faces

We reported in this journal (Langlois & Roggman, 1990) findings showing that attractive faces are those that represent the mathematical average of faces in a population These findings were intriguing because they provided a parsimonious definition of facial attractiveness and because they supported explanations of attractiveness from the point of view of both evolutionary and cognitive-prototype theory Since our 1990 report, several alternative explanations of our findings have been offered In this article, we show that none of these alternatives explains our results adequately

Does Human Facial Attractiveness Honestly Advertise Health? Longitudinal Data on an Evolutionary Question

Inspired by the evolutionary conjecture that sexually selected traits function as indicators of pathogen resistance in animals and humans, we examined the notion that human facial attractiveness provides evidence of health. Using photos of 164 males and 169 females in late adolescence and health data on these individuals in adolescence, middle adulthood, and later adulthood, we found that adolescent facial attractiveness was unrelated to adolescent health for either males or females, and was not predictive of health at the later times. We also asked raters to guess the health of each stimulus person from his or her photo. Relatively attractive stimulus persons were mistakenly rated as healthier than their peers. The correlation between perceived health and medically assessed health increased when attractiveness was statistically controlled, which implies that attractiveness suppressed the accurate recognition of health. These findings may have important implications for evolutionary models.

Infants' Differential Processing of Female and Male Faces

Infants show an interesting asymmetry in face processing: They are more fluent in processing female faces than they are at processing male faces. We hypothesize that such processing asymmetry results from greater experience with female faces than with male faces early in development. Asymmetrical face processing may have long-lasting implications for development of face recognition, development of knowledge structures regarding females and males, and social-information processing. We encourage researchers to use both female and male faces in their face-perception research and to conduct separate analyses for female and male faces.

Are attractive men's faces masculine or feminine? The importance of type of facial stimuli.

The authors investigated whether differences in facial stimuli could explain the inconsistencies in the facial attractiveness literature regarding whether adults prefer more masculine- or more feminine-looking male faces. Their results demonstrated that use of a female average to dimorphically transform a male facial average produced stimuli that did not accurately reflect the relationship between masculinity and attractiveness. In contrast, use of averages of masculine males and averages of feminine males produced stimuli that did accurately reflect the relationship between masculinity and attractiveness. Their findings suggest that masculinity contributes more to male facial attractiveness than does femininity, but future research should investigate how various combinations of facial cues contribute to male facial attractiveness.

Child Care Research: An Editorial Perspective

The goals of Child Developments new From Another Perspective format are discussed, and an overview of the content of the inaugural From Another Perspective collection on child care effects is provided. The two lead articles suggest, respectively, that long hours in child care are related to childrens later behavior problems and that child care may be physiologically challenging for young children. Commentaries focus on the need to examine a range of additional factors before drawing definitive conclusions about cause and effect. Among the issues discussed in the commentaries are the need to account for context, individual differences among children, and methodological challenges. The introductory editorial also overviews policy implications and directions for future research.

Mothers, infants, and toys: Social play correlates of attachment

Abstract Eighteen securely attached and 19 anxiously attached mother-infant pairs were observed at 14 months in a nonstressful play situation. The securely attached group evidenced (a) more frequent infant-to-mother toy exchanges; (b) fewer maternal demonstrations of play; (c) more frequent positively toned maternal vocalizations; and (d) fewer nonpositively toned infant vocalizations; but no differences in the cognitive quality of infant toy play.

The Role of Physical Attractiveness in the Observation of Adult-Child Interactions: Eye of the Beholder or Behavioral Reality?.

The susceptibility of observations of adult-child interactions to bias due to the physical attractiveness of target persons was examined. Facial features of target persons were occluded in one version of a videotape and unoccluded in another, otherwise identical version. Using a global rating system and a molecular coding strategy, 38 trained observers coded occluded and unoccluded versions of four videotapes, two of which were of attractive targets and two of unattractive targets. Findings indicated that the observers were significantly and favorably biased toward attractive women, when making global judgments about behavioral interactions. No bias was obtained, however, when observers used a molecular coding strategy. The results demonstrate the need to be cautious about employing and interpreting global ratings and suggest that molecular coding techniques may insulate observers from bias due to the attractiveness of the observed person. (Author/RH) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ***********************************************************************

Computational Models of Facial Attractiveness Judgments

We designed two computational models to replicate human facial attractiveness ratings. The primary model used partial least squares (PLS) to identify image factors associated with facial attractiveness from facial images and attractiveness ratings of those images. For comparison we also made a model similar to previous models of facial attractiveness, in that it used manually derived measurements between features as inputs, though we took the additional step of dimensionality reduction via principal component analysis (PCA) and weighting of PCA dimensions via a perceptron. Strikingly, both models produced estimates of facial attractiveness that were indistinguishable from human ratings. Because PLS extracts a small number of image factors from the facial images that covary with attractiveness ratings of the images, it is possible to determine the information used by the model. The image factors that the model discovered correspond to two of the main contemporary hypotheses of averageness judgments: facial attractiveness and sexual dimorphism. In contrast, facial symmetry was not important to the model, and an explicit feature-based measurement of symmetry was not correlated with human judgments of facial attractiveness. This provides novel evidence for the importance of averageness and sexual dimorphism, but not symmetry, in human judgments of facial attractiveness.

Sex typing: Construct and measurement issues

This study examined the relationships among commonly used measures of sex typing. A sample of 101 children, three to five years of age, were each seen on three occasions and administered six different measures of sex typing. The results showed that relations among the various measures of sex typing were quite modest for girls and only moderate for boys. Gender constancy scores did not mediate the relationships among measures for either girls or boys. The results are interpreted as supporting a multidimensional view of childrens sex typing and as urging caution in generalizing results based on single measures of sex typing.