Physically attractive faces attract us physically
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Electronic versions
Documents
- 2020 Physically attractive faces attract us physically.accepted
Accepted author manuscript, 454 KB, PDF document
Licence: CC BY-NC-ND Show licence
DOI
When interacting with other humans, facial expressions provide valuable information for approach or avoid decisions. Here, we consider facial attractiveness as another important dimension upon which approach-avoidance behaviours may be based. In Experiments 1-3, we measured participants’ responses to attractive and unattractive women’s faces in an approach-avoidance paradigm in which there was no explicit instruction to evaluate facial attractiveness or any other stimulus attribute. Attractive faces were selected more often, a bias that may be sensitive to response outcomes and was reduced when the faces were inverted. Experiment 4 explored an entirely implicit measure of approach, with participants passively viewing single faces while standing on a force platform. We found greater lean towards attractive faces, with this pattern being most obvious in male participants. Taken together, these results demonstrate that attractiveness activates approach-avoidance tendencies, even in the absence of any task demand.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 104193 |
Journal | Cognition |
Volume | 198 |
Early online date | 1 Feb 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 May 2020 |
Total downloads
No data available