An Eye-movement Research On Facial Cues Of Mate Choice And Kin Recognition

Mate choice and kin recognition are important decisions. Facial features are one of important clues of these two decisions. Previous studies have found that self-facial resemblance increases attractiveness and trustworthiness judgement. This article investigates the different patterns of eye movement when engaging in attractiveness and trustworthiness judgement which are the index of mate choice and kin recognition respectively.3 experiments are conducted:Experiment 1 examines the Separability of the two judgment tasks. Experiment2 investigates the eye movements when engaging in attractiveness and trustworthiness judgement on other people's face. Experiment3 investigates the eye movements when engaging in attractiveness and trustworthiness judgement on self-resembling face.Conclusions:a) Judgement of attractiveness and trustworthiness are two separable tasks. The differences of fixations and fixation duration in interest areas between two tasks are not significant.b) In both two judgement tasks, subjects pay different attention to different face features. Face features are listed below by descending order of fixation duration:eyes, nose, mouth, forehead, cheeks and chin.c) When evaluating others'face, subjects have more fixations and longer fixation duration on positive judgement face (higher attractiveness and trustworthiness) than negative-judgement face (lower attractiveness and trustworthiness). When evaluating on self-resembling face, subjects have more fixations and longer fixation duration on self-resembling face than non-self-resembling face.d) Behavioral data shows that when evaluating the same sex faces, subjects tend to choose self-resembling face to be more attractive and trustworthy. But when evaluating the opposite sex faces, subjects'choice are reversed.e) When evaluating self-resembling face, the interaction is significant. When engaging in attraction judgement, subjects pay more attention to eyes and nose. In the trustworthy judgement, subjects pay more attention to mouth and cheeks.f) The behavioral data shows that, females hold higher standard than male on attractiveness judgement, but there is no difference in trustworthiness judgement. Females have more fixations on face than males, but there is no difference in fixation duration.