SHIFTING THE PROTOTYPE: EXPERIENCE WITH FACES INFLUENCES AFFECTIVE AND ATTRACTIVENESS PREFERENCES

Overview

Journal Soc Cogn

Specialty Psychology

Date 2012 Dec 11

PMID 23226915

Citations 5

Authors

Connor P Principe

Judith H Langlois

Affiliations

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Abstract

While some researchers have suggested that preferences for attractive faces are the result of a domain-specific beauty detection module, others argue these preferences develop based on averages of stimuli through a domain-general learning mechanism. We tested whether cognitive and perceptual mechanisms sensitive to experience underlie facial preferences by familiarizing participants with human, chimpanzee, or morphed faces (60%-chimp/40%-human). Results indicated that participants familiarized with human-chimp morphs showed greater zygomaticus major activity, a physiological correlate of positive affect (Study 1), and higher explicit attractiveness ratings (Study 2) to faces morphed to some degree with chimpanzees. These results demonstrate that experience shifts attractiveness preferences away from the normative average, and suggest that a domain-general cognitive mechanism better accounts for facial preferences than a domain-specific innate beauty-detector.

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