The Facial Skin Homogeneity Effects On Perception Of Physical Changes And Attractiveness

Previous studies suggested that facial skin homogeneity can affect judgments of facial physical changes and attractiveness.Based on the evolution and social influence of facial attractiveness,people’s perception of facial attractiveness is very sensitive.It is currently unknown whether a face can be perceived prettier than it did before while still being considered as physically the same.There is evidence that these two kinds of cognitive-aesthetic processing may have separate mathematical functions in psychophysical studies.Is it possible that people’s perception of facial attractiveness and physical changes have different sensitivities? How does facial skin homogeneity affect these two judgments? Do they reflect different psychological processes? To answer these questions,the three studies in this article quantitatively manipulated facial skin homogeneity and explored the impact of facial skin homogeneity on facial physical changes and attractiveness perception.The purpose of Study 1 is to explore the impact of facial skin homogeneity on the physical change detection and attractiveness judgments.This study manipulated four levels of facial skin homogeneity: 0%,30%,45%,100%.Experiment 1 explored the impact of facial skin homogeneity on facial physical change detection.Participants were asked to make the same/different judgments on two face images.Experiments 2A,2B,and 2C used three psychophysical methods of different sensitivity to measure the facial attractiveness judgments.In Experiment 2A,Participants were asked to choose the more attractive one in two faces.In Experiment 2B,participants were asked to make the same/different judgments of attractiveness on two face images.In Experiment 2C,participants were asked to rate the facial attractiveness.Study 1 found that:(1)Compared to physical change detection,participants were more sensitive in judging facial attractiveness.They could judge a face prettier than before without being aware of it had physically changed.(2)Results showed a linear function curve for facial physical change detection in Experiment 1 and a logarithmic function curve was drawn in the forced-choice technique which was the most sensitive one of Experiment 2.(3)Facial attractiveness could be enhanced by improving facial skin homogeneity,but this effect was limited.As the facial skin homogeneity increased,the facial attractiveness would also rapidly increase.When the facial skin homogeneity reached a certain level,the change of facial attractiveness became very small.The purpose of Study 2 is to explore the impact of presentation mode on facial skin homogeneity and facial attractiveness judgments,in order to test the involvement of holistic processing in these two judgments.Experiment 3 examined the influence of inversion on the judgments of facial skin homogeneity.Participants were asked to compare the skin homogeneity of two faces under upright and inverted conditions.The results of Experiment 3 showed that there was no difference in the judgments of facial skin homogeneity between upright and inverted conditions.Experiment 4 examined the influence of inversion on the judgments of facial attractiveness.Participants were asked to compare the attractiveness of two faces under upright and inverted conditions.The results of Experiment 4 showed that the performance of attractiveness judgments under inverted conditions decreased compared to upright conditions.Study 2 found that inversion impaired the perception of facial attractiveness and did not affect the perception of facial skin homogeneity.The perception of facial attractiveness relied on the facial holistic processing,while the judgment of facial skin homogeneity did not require the involvement of facial holistic processing.The purpose of Study 3 is to explore the visual attention differences in facial skin homogeneity judgment and facial attractiveness judgment.In Experiment 5,participants were asked to perform facial skin homogeneity and facial attractiveness forced-choice tasks.The results showed that the fixation rate of the facial skin area was higher in skin homogeneity judgment than in attractiveness judgment.And the fixation rate of the non-skin area was higher in attractiveness judgment than in skin homogeneity judgment.Study 3 found that participants invested more visual attention in non-skin areas(such as the eyes and mouth)when making attractiveness judgments compared to skin homogeneity judgments.Study 3 provided evidence for the differences in facial attractiveness perception and facial feature perception in terms of visual attention.In summary,this study suggests that:(1)People’s perception of facial attractiveness is more sensitive than the physical changes detection.(2)Facial attractiveness can be enhanced by improving facial skin homogeneity,but this effect is limited.(3)The perception of facial attractiveness relies on the holistic processing,while the judgment of facial skin homogeneity does not require the involvement of holistic processing.These findings can deepen our understanding of the facial attractiveness perception.This study suggest that people’s perception of physical stimuli and perception of social information may have different processing mechanisms.Physical change perception may only require low-level processing channels,while facial social information related perception(such as attractiveness)utilizes higher-level processing channels.In addition,this study can provide guidance and suggestions for people’s skin care and makeup in real life.Improving facial skin homogeneity is not only very effective but also "twice the result with half the effort" for improving facial attractiveness.A small improvement in skin homogeneity can significantly enhance facial attractiveness.