Bellringer (in journals)  Do you believe that the idea of attractiveness (the way that it is perceived by others) is a result of nature or nurture? Explain your choice in 5-7 sentences.  Announcement: AICE Midterm 1/15 & 1/19

Attractiveness Nurture?  Are preferences for attractiveness culturally transmitted? Lengthened necks Bound feet Painted skin Dyed hair Flattened or enlarged breasts Fat Thin

Attractiveness: Nurture?

Attractiveness: Nature? “Beautiful faces and bodies worldwide are generally ones that look youthful, healthy, symmetrical, "average" in the sense that we prefer features– noses, legs, physiques– that are neither too large nor too small” David G. Myers in Psychology.

Attractiveness Nature  These images were created by morphing together the features of many women to come up with the "average" face.

Averageness  An average face has mathematically average trait values for a population  Several theorists have proposed that average traits reflect developmental stability  faces representing the average value of the population would be consistently judged as attractive.

Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, and Vaughn (1991) Facial Diversity and Infant Preferences for Attractive Faces

Study 1

Study 1: Aim  To investigate whether certain male and female faces influences infant preferences for attractiveness

Study 1: Sample  60-6 month old infants 53 of them were white

Study 1: Method  Laboratory experiment  IV? What was manipulated?  DV? What was measured?

Study 1: Method  Each infant saw color slides of 16 adult Caucasian women & 16 Caucasian adult men Half of the slides of each sex depicted attractive faces, the other half unattractive faces

Stimuli Selected: 16 female faces from a pool of male faces from a total pool of 165

Study 1: Method  Each infant saw color slides of 16 adult Caucasian women & 16 Caucasian adult men Half of the slides of each sex depicted attractive faces, the other half unattractive faces

Study 1: Method Choosing the Faces  Operational definition of attractive: The slides’ faces were rated for attractiveness by at least 40 undergraduate men & women using a 5-point Likert-type scale (rating scale)  Final faces selected: Facial expression, hair length, hair color were equally distributed across attractiveness conditions All male faces clean-shaven Clothing cues masked Faces were posed with neutral expressions  Why?

Study 1: Method  Standard visual preference technique  Infant seated on parent's lap; parent wore occluded glasses. Why?  A light and a buzzing noise  A trial began when the infant first looked at one of the slides When the infant looked at the center of the screen, the next pair of slides was displayed.  Each trial lasted for 10 s.  Screen brightness consistent throughout

Study 1: Method  The stimuli were presented in two sets of 16 slides Each set divided into 8 trial blocks of 2 slides each  Control for infant side biases  Slides paired so that infants viewed only pairs of women or pairs of men Alternating condition, the infants observed alternating pairs of males and females. Grouped condition, infants saw all the women's slides together & all the men's slides together  Infants given 5-10-min break after 8 trials to lessen fatigue

Study 1: Method  Order of set presentation, order of slide pair presentation within sets (within the constraints of the set), & order of slide pairing randomized across subjects so that a particular slide of an attractive face could be paired with any slide of an unattractive face of the same sex

Study 1: Method  Direction & duration of looks recorded on the keyboard of a laboratory computer that functioned as an event recorder  Using the televised image of the infant to observe visual fixation ensured that the experimenter could not see the displayed slides & was therefore blind to the attractiveness level of the slides the infant was observing  Reliability of the visual-fixation scoring obtained by having each experimenter score randomly selected videotaped sessions periodically throughout data collection

Study 1: Results  Infants looked longer at the attractive faces than the unattractive faces  Infant preferences for attractive faces were evident for both adult male & adult female faces  Condition of presentation was not significant  Boys looked longer at male faces Girls also preferred same sex faces but the finding was not statistically significant  Mother’s attractiveness did not make a difference (Why do this?)

Study 1: Method  A trial began when the infant first looked at one of the slides When the infant looked at the center of the screen, the next pair of slides was displayed.  Each trial lasted for 10 s.

Procedure  Standard visual preference technique 35 cms CENTRE OF SCREEN PARENT SCREEN

Procedure  Standard visual preference technique 35 cms SCREEN PARENT

Study 1: Method  Control for infant side biases  Slides paired so that infants viewed only pairs of women or pairs of men Alternating condition, the infants observed alternating pairs of males and females. Grouped condition, infants saw all the women's slides together & all the men's slides together  Infants given 5-10-min break after 8 trials to lessen fatigue

Study 1: Method  Order of set presentation, order of slide pair presentation within sets (within the constraints of the set), & order of slide pairing randomized across subjects so that a particular slide of an attractive face could be paired with any slide of an unattractive face of the same sex

Study 1: Method  Direction & duration of looks recorded on the keyboard of a laboratory computer that functioned as an event recorder  Using the televised image of the infant to observe visual fixation ensured that the experimenter could not see the displayed slides & was therefore blind to the attractiveness level of the slides the infant was observing  Reliability of the visual-fixation scoring obtained by having each experimenter score randomly selected videotaped sessions periodically throughout data collection

Study 1: Results  Infants looked longer at the attractive faces than the unattractive faces  Infant preferences for attractive faces were evident for both adult male & adult female faces  Condition of presentation was not significant  Boys looked longer at male faces Girls also preferred same sex faces but the finding was not statistically significant  Mother’s attractiveness did not make a difference (Why do this?)

Study 2

Study 2: Aim  To extend the findings to non-white faces Infants were shown faces of Black adult women. The faces were rated for attractiveness by both Black and Caucasian adult judges.

Study 2  Sample 40-6 month old infants (36 white)  Presentation Black adult female faces Rest of procedure same as study 1

Stimuli AttractiveUnattractiv e Total Adult Black Women 8816

Results  6-month-old infants looked longer at the attractive Black women's faces than at the unattractive faces.  Like Study 1, no significant relationships were found between maternal attractiveness and either infant sex or attractiveness of stimulus face.

Study 3

 Aim To extend the findings to infant faces  Sample 39-6 month old infants (36 white)  Presentation 3 month old baby faces Rest of procedure as in study 1

Study 3: Results  Infants looked longer at the attractive faces than the unattractive faces

Explanation  “Ethnically diverse faces possess both distinct and similar, perhaps even universal, structural features.”  Beauty is (in some part) nature NOT nurture

Results High AttractivenessLow Attractiveness Type of FaceMSDM Male and Female Faces (Study 1) Black Female Faces (Study 2) Baby Faces (Study 3) Table 1 Mean Fixation Times for High- and Low-Attractiveness Slides

QUESTION  Why are attractive faces special to infants and why do infants prefer them to less attractive faces? HINT: Averageness – faces representing the average value of the population would be consistently judged as attractive.

Prototypical

Vocabulary ALERT  Cultural transmission  Statistical significance  Likert-type scale  Prototype