Cheng Hsuan Chen¹ (), Chien Chung Chen¹; ¹National Taiwan University

It is known that face recognition is holistic, or that faces are processed based on the spatial relationships between facial features rather than individual components. However, it remains unclear whether facial attractiveness judgement is based on separate facial features or the configuration between them. We investigated this issue with a composite face paradigm. We created a stimulus set by morphing faces between original and averaged faces and then extrapolated to create caricatures. We then split the faces into upper and lower halves and recombined them to create composite faces with varying degrees of attractiveness in upper and lower halves of a face. Participants were to judge the faces by three criteria: solely on the upper half, the lower half, and the whole face. When the judgement was based on either upper or lower halves, ratings were only influenced by the morphing level of that half. When the judgement was based on the whole face, the attractiveness rating depended on a combination of independent upper and lower face evaluations. Using a model derived from the multidimensional signal detection theory, we revealed that there was only minor interaction between the two halves of the faces. Both lower and upper faces contributed to attractiveness judgement with a greater emphasis on the upper face. The findings demonstrate that facial attractiveness judgments are primarily analytic rather than holistic, contrasting with the holistic face recognition processes. These results help resolve conflicts in existing literature by showing that attractiveness judgments involve predominantly independent processing of facial features with limited interaction between them.

Acknowledgements: NSTC (Taiwan) 112-2423-H-002-002