Lewis, Jennifer and Roberson, Debi and Foulsham, Tom (2017) The impact of facial abnormalities and their spatial position on perception of cuteness and attractiveness of infant faces. PLoS ONE, 12 (7). e0180499-e0180499. DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180499
Lewis, Jennifer and Roberson, Debi and Foulsham, Tom (2017) The impact of facial abnormalities and their spatial position on perception of cuteness and attractiveness of infant faces. PLoS ONE, 12 (7). e0180499-e0180499. DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180499
Lewis, Jennifer and Roberson, Debi and Foulsham, Tom (2017) The impact of facial abnormalities and their spatial position on perception of cuteness and attractiveness of infant faces. PLoS ONE, 12 (7). e0180499-e0180499. DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180499
Abstract
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Research has demonstrated that how “cute” an infant is perceived to be has consequences for caregiving. Infants with facial abnormalities receive lower ratings of cuteness, but relatively little is known about how different abnormalities and their location affect these aesthetic judgements. The objective of the current study was to compare the impact of different abnormalities on the perception of infant faces, while controlling for infant identity. In two experiments, adult participants gave ratings of cuteness and attractiveness in response to face images that had been edited to introduce common facial abnormalities. Stimulus faces displayed either a haemangioma (a small, benign birth mark), strabismus (an abnormal alignment of the eyes) or a cleft lip (an abnormal opening in the upper lip). In Experiment 1, haemangioma had less of a detrimental effect on ratings than the more severe abnormalities. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the position of a haemangioma on the face. We found small but robust effects of this position, with abnormalities in the top and on the left of the face receiving lower cuteness ratings. This is consistent with previous research showing that people attend more to the top of the face (particularly the eyes) and to the left hemifield.
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Face; Humans; Hemangioma; Linear Models; Reproducibility of Results; Visual Perception; Judgment; Adult; Infant; Female; Male |
Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology |
Divisions: | Faculty of Science and Health Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 22 Aug 2017 14:00 |
Last Modified: | 07 Aug 2024 20:37 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/20242 |
Available files
Filename: journal.pone.0180499.pdf
Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0