The Effects Of Body’s State On Individuals Of The Judgment Of Facial Reward

Recently, facial attractiveness draws intense interest among the psychologists focusing on social cognition. A large body of research has found that facial attractiveness is of great importance to human social life (e.g., mate choosing and cooperation). The perception of facial attractiveness can be influenced by a lot of factors, which not only includes the physical features of faces, but also the body’s state of the observer (e.g. the hormone state)(Jones et al,2005; Pawlowski&Jasienska,2005).Previous research has shown that the coding of facial attractiveness and food reward share the same or overlapping cognitive mechanism. In addition, it is shown that the hungry/satiated state for food mediated one’s attitude towards food stimuli (e.g. Cabanac,1971). Collectively, the hungry/satiated state may also influence the perception of facial attractiveness. Thus, the present dissertation hypothesized that the the hungry/satiated state would influence the attitude towards food and more importantly, it would also influence the perception of faical attractiveness.The first experiment investigated the influence of hungry/satiated state on the perception of food reward through both the implicit and explicit approaches. Experiment1used Implicit Association Test and explicit rating as measures, and the hunger state of participants as independent variable, the results showed that, the hunger state did not influence implicit attitude towards food. However, the results showed that, compared to the satiated state, participants under hunger state rated higher of the palatability of delicious food. The hunger state also led people to prefer delicious but unhealthy food to healthy but un-delicious food. These results implied that hunger state could enhance people’s perception of the hedonic value of food reward.Experiment2, employing the subliminal priming paradigm, explored the influence of implicit processing of food stimuli on the perception of facial attractiveness. The results showed that, for the female participants, the priming of food reward increased the rating of facial attractiveness. In addition, using the hungry/satiated state as independent variable and the size of the priming effect food rewards as dependent variable, a linear regression equation was established, which showed the more hungry the participants were, the bigger the priming effects they showed. For the male participants, the priming of food rewards did not influence the rating of facial attractiveness.The above two experiments showed that (1) the hungry/satiated state affected the attitude towards hedonic value of food, and (2) the subliminal priming of food stimuli influenced the perception of facial attractiveness, which add evidence to the idea that the processing of facial attractiveness and food reward might occupy overlapping mechanisms. Experiment3explored how the (hunger or satiated) body state impacted the perception of face attractiveness. The results showed that, compared to satiated state, female participants under hunger state rated lower regarding the attractiveness of male faces. For the male participants, hunger state did not influence the rating of facial attractiveness. The results indicated that the hungry/satiated state influenced the rating facial attractiveness, which means that the physiological state of individuals influences cognitive processes of higher level. This study provided new evidence for the embodied cognition theory.