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

Attractiveness Nature vs. Nurture Pretty is as pretty does. Beauty is only skin deep. Never judge a book by its cover.

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.

Langlois et al. 3 tests of attractiveness White adults (male♂ & female♀) Black female♀ adults 3-months old infants (♂ & ♀) Previous study: White female♀

Method Laboratory experiment IV? What was manipulated? DV? What was measured?

Method 8 x 2 faces were projected on to a screen ½ attractive – ½ unattractive (Likert scale) Child on parents´s lap Parent wore occluded glasses. Light & buzz: 10s / trial Neutral expressions, clothing masked Controlled R/L presentation Infants given 5-10-min break after 8 trials to lessen fatigue

Method 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 Maternal attractiveness was evaluated in studies 1 and 2. (Why not in study 3?)

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

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

White adults (male♂ & female♀) Study 1

Study 1: Aim To replicate their previous results with adult female facial stimuli To extend the results to male facial stimuli To investigate whether the manner in which male and female faces are presented influences infant preferences

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

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 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

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: Results ♂ face ♀ face M SD ♂ Infant 7.95 1.45 7.36 1.31 7.69 1.35 7.81 1.33 ♂ Infants look longer at ♂ faces p ˂ 0.01 ♀ Infants look longer at ♀ faces p not significantly M: Media - SD: Standard deviation

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?)

Black adults female♀ 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: Method Sample Presentation 40-6 month old infants (36 white) Black adult female faces Rest of procedure same as study 1

Study 2: Results Infants looked longer at the attractive faces than the unattractive faces Mother’s attractiveness did not make a difference

3-months old infants (male♂ & female♀) Study 3

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

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

Results – fixation times High attractiveness Low attractiveness M SD White ♂♀ Infants look longer at attractive faces p=0.03 Black ♀ Infants look longer at attractive faces p˂0.05 Babies ♂♀ Infants look longer at attractive faces p˂0.04

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

Discussion Beautiful faces are prototypical: an original form serving as a basis or standard for other forms Why might prototypical faces be evolutionarily adaptive? Individuals closer to the mean might be less likely to have genetic mutations?

Averageness An average face has mathematically average trait values for a population Faces that are high in averageness are low in distinctiveness and are therefore prototypical Several theorists have proposed that average traits reflect developmental stability

Prototypes Averaged faces become more attractive as more faces are added (Langlois & Roggman, 1990)

Evaluation Infant preferences were Validity Consistent, but… Only for unfamiliar faces… Why? Familiar caregivers: ↑attachment Validity High experimental ☺ High or low external (ecological)? - all types of faces? / too many white participants?

Evaluation Visual preferences paradigm is comparative, not absolute In other study (Langlois et al. 1987), however, 6-month old infants prefered attractive faces when presented alone → visual preference paradigm din´t biased the results

Vocabulary alert Cultural transmission Evolutionary preferences Statistical significance Likert-type scale Prototype External validity Experimental validity Attractiveness Nature Nurture Visual preferences

What do 100 people from London look like?

What does the face of 7 billion look like?