Theory L4 - Face Processing 2

Question 1

Explain the development of preferential face processing.

Answer 1

• From birth, predisposed to look at faces in general
• 6 month old babies do not show a preference for human or monkey faces
• @ 9 months, human infants prefer to attend to human faces
• thought that primates are specialised for recognising members of their own species.

** Depends what they’re brought up with - monkeys raised by humans will show greater discrimination for humans – develops specialisation to what will benefit the individual.

Question 2

What did Dufour et al. 2005 do to evidence specialised facial processing in conspecifics?

Answer 2

• Presented primates with a series of different primate faces and asked which ones they’d seen before.
• Participants looked for longer at members of their own species, and did not show recognition of phylogenetically close species (aka. show greater attention to their own).
• confirms human and nonhuman primates show specialisation for discrimination of conspecific faces

Question 3

What evidence is there were own race bias in facial processing?

Answer 3

• due to increased perceptual experience
• show poorer discrim. and worse memory performance for other race faces.
• When convenience store cashiers were asked to identify 3 customers they had served, one african american, mexican and american, cashiers were sig better @ identifying own race customers.
• 3 month old infants showed longer looking times at race-congruent faces (these children were brought up in race-congruent enviros)

Question 4

What are the implications of the own race bias?

Answer 4

• Bad for eye witness! People will only be good at identifying people of their own race.

Question 5

How do non-human primates process faces?

Answer 5

• non-human primates more closely related to humans use the configural strategy.
• the further related to humans, the less likely to process configurally.
• Presented chimps and rhesus monkeys with inverted conspecific faces upside down and upright.
• results showed that chimps perceived the illusion, whilst rhesus monkeys did not.

THUS chimps –> configurally
Rhesus –> Featural processing

Question 6

What is the beauty Halo?

Answer 6

• we bestow favourable characteristics on beautiful people.

we are more likely to

• vote for an attractive politician
• hire or promote and reward an attractive employee
• attend to an attractive friend
• punish an unattractive child
• find an attractive defendant not guilty.

Question 7

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Answer 7

• Evidence is showing that the constituents of beauty are not arbitrary or culture-bound.
• faces found attractive in one culture are judged attractive in other cultures
• suggests that beauty is innate not learned.
• 3 month old babies show preference to beautiful faces just like adults. –> no external influence
• chickens also prefer to look at beautiful human faces for longer.

perceptions of beauty are perceptually basic and cross-culture

Question 8

What is averageness?

Answer 8

Francis Galton used faces of criminals and created an averaged face.

He noticed that AVERAGED FACES were BETTER LOOKING than their components.

it is free from irregularities that variously blemish the looks of each of them. Gets rid of extremes.

Question 9

What evidenced that averageness is more attractive?

Answer 9

• Langlois & Roggman showed that when digitizied and mathematically averaged male and female faces, participants rated the attractiveness of the composite faces than the original faces.
• ratings for 16 and 32 face composies were 1 SD higher than the mean attractiveness rating across individ faces.

Question 10

What are some aspects of attractiveness?

Answer 10

• Averageness
• Symmetry
• Sexual dimorphism

Question 11

what’s symmetry?

Answer 11

• the extent to which one half of the face matches the other
• reliably influences receptions of beauty
• more symm faces are judged more attractive in both human and non human faces
• more symmetrical (averaged faces) were rated higher in dominance, attractiveness, sexual attractiveness and health.
• Rhodes et al 1998 - generated 4 versions of male and female models’ faces for original, low, high and perfect symmetry - more symmetrical = higher attractiveness. and more symmetrical women also rated as more desirable as long term partners.

Question 12

What is a theory as to why we believe symmetry influences attractiveness?

Answer 12

INSINUATES GENETIC QUALITY - fluctuating asymmetries are deviations from perfect symmetry in bilaterally paired structures - they reflect dev instability resulting from genetic or environmental stress.

– Children grown in slums are less symmetrical than those who are better off.

Question 13

What is sexual dimorphism?

Answer 13

• sexually dimorphic traits increase at puberty - indicate sexual maturity and reproductivity.
• males – testosterone stimulates growth of jaw, cheekbones, brow ridges and facial hair
• females – growth of male traits inhibited by oestrogen, which also increases lip size. - softer features, smaller chip, higher cheekbones, softer brows

Question 14

What is evidence for sexual dimorphism being an attractive trait?

Answer 14

• Studies have shown more masculine male faces are more attractive for both long and short term relationships
• More recent studies confirm a preference for moderately feminised male faces for long term relationship.
• Hormone levels influence perceptions of female attractveness - roberts et all (2004) showed that women were rated more attractive during follicular phase than during luteal phase.
  Other research also showed females groom and dress more attractively during follicular phase

Question 15

What does beauty tell us?

Answer 15

More attractive people tend to:

• live longer
• have better physical health
• have better mental health
• it is an honest signal of genotypic and phenotypic quality of the bearer - provides a reliable index of health.

we have evolved an exquisite sensitivity to beauty and perceive certain features as attractive because those features are displayed by healthy organisms

Question 16

What does averageness index for?

Answer 16

Developmental stability and heterozygosity

Question 17

What does symmetry index for?

Answer 17

Developmental stability and genetic health

Question 18

What does sexual dimorphism index for?

Answer 18

Sexual maturity, fertility and genetic quality

Question 19

How is beauty a reward?

Answer 19

• Brain has evolved to reward actions, experiences and preferences that were adaptive for our evolutionary precursors
• As beauty is a reliable index of health, viewing attractive faces should activate the brain’s reward circuitry leading both adults and children to favour attractive faces.

Question 20

Evidence that beauty is a reward?

Answer 20

Viewing beautiful faces activates brains reward networks. Looking at beautiful faces, especially when it looks at you, gives a reward.

• nucleus accumbens - reward expectancy
• orbitofrontal cortex - future reward value
• ventral striatum - reward prediction

there isnt a punishment if its unattractive - activation becomes neutral.

• Studies also have shown that when presenting participants with beautiful and average male/female faces, male participants chose to look at beautiful female faces for longer, and female participants chose to look at both beautiful male and female faces for longer.
• But males in gender expended more than 4 times as many key presses as females to maintain the view of beautiful female faces!

Question 21

How fast can beauty attract attention?

Answer 21

• 100msec stimulus presentations, we extract sufficient cues to male attractiveness judgements to unfamiliar faces.
• We may not even be conscious of it - peripheral + central vision.
• time-constrained verdicts correlate highly (.69) with judgements made without time constraints - first impressions do count!! - judgements you make when you’re conscious are similar to when you’re not conscious.

Question 22

How strong is the attention priviledge of beauty?

Answer 22

• Eye tracking research shows we spend longer fixating and are better at tracking attractive than average or unnattractive faces
• even when attractive stimuli is irrelevant, we attend to it.
• our eyes can be drawn to attractive face even when we are focussing elsewhere - when asked to fixate on central location and a fair of faces were shown peripherally and to press a button to indicate attractiveness.
• when faces were shown in the foveal, parafoveal and peripheral presentations, results were good…
• shows visual system evolved to facilitate extrafoveal detection of beauty - can attract attention even when we’re not looking at it

Question 23

What have functional imaging studies shown for beauty capturing attention?

Answer 23

O’doherty et al showed OFC activation in response to attractive faces, even when it was irrelevant to the task - people were asked to rate if the face was male or female.

shows that the perception of attractiveness is automatic and effortless

neural responses to attractive faces engaged participants even when completing an unrelated task.

males showed a gender difference for rewards, but males didnt.

get the reward even if we’re not consciously making judgements.

Question 24

What has the behavioural paradigm shown us about beauty capturing attention?

Answer 24

When shown a series of faces: eg. many attractive faces amongst a less attractive face, or less atractive faces and an attractive face etc.. then it is masked, and another series of faces is shown

need to determine if theyre the same face - change detection

it was harder for participants to detect change when the target was embedded amongst attractive faces - it’s thought that the attractive faces capture the attention and disrupt the ability to redistribute attention.

this effect was not seen when target was within unattractive faces.

Question 25

WHY does beauty attract attention

Answer 25

- evolutionary bias. - we favour it because it is rewarding. - it is favoured and rewarded because it indexes genetic quality. - we perceive it very efficiently, whether inside or outside the region of high visual acuity, and we appraise it whether or not it is relevant to what we are doing. truly does capture the mind of the beholder.

Question 26

What are the reward centres of the brain?

Answer 26

- nucleus accumbens - orbitofrontal cortex - verbal striatum