Beauty on my mind
So composite faces and prototypical faces are the ones judged to be beautiful. And the thought was that it is evolutionarily advantageous to not be attracted to non-average, ie disfigured people who might be a let fit mate.
It looks like Piotr Winkielman of the University of California, San Diego put non-reproductive stimuli in front of people and in short "...the less time it took participants to classify a pattern, the more attractive they judged it."
This is of interest to our group because we're always interested in seeing more general cognitive functions being explanations for what was thought to be a more specific "need" or "adaptation". And if you've been reading along, this tendency is because generative linguistics has been pushing for grammar specific neural networks where our understanding of the brain makes that level of specificity highly unlikely. Studies like this seem to point out that even mate selection based on "beauty" may rest on a more general pattern recognition system.
Science Blog covers the story. Click on for quotes from Science Blog and a link to the paper.
Link to the paper with subscription to Psychological Sciences
ABSTRACT—People tend to prefer highly prototypical stimuli—a phenomenon referred to as the beauty-in-averageness effect. A common explanation of this effect proposes that prototypicality signals mate value. Here we present three experiments testing whether prototypicality preference results from more general mechanisms—fluent processing of prototypes and preference for fluently processed stimuli. In two experiments, participants categorized and rated the attractiveness of random-dot patterns (Experiment 1) or common geometric patterns (Experiment 2) that varied in levels of prototypicality. In both experiments, prototypicality was a predictor of both fluency (categorization speed) and attractiveness. Critically, fluency mediated the effect of prototypicality on attractiveness, although some effect of prototypicality remained when fluency was controlled. The findings were the same whether or not participants explicitly considered the pattern's categorical membership, and whether or not categorization fluency was salient when they rated attractiveness. Experiment 3, using the psychophysiological technique of facial electromyography, confirmed that viewing abstract prototypes elicits quick positive affective reactions.
It looks like Piotr Winkielman of the University of California, San Diego put non-reproductive stimuli in front of people and in short "...the less time it took participants to classify a pattern, the more attractive they judged it."
This is of interest to our group because we're always interested in seeing more general cognitive functions being explanations for what was thought to be a more specific "need" or "adaptation". And if you've been reading along, this tendency is because generative linguistics has been pushing for grammar specific neural networks where our understanding of the brain makes that level of specificity highly unlikely. Studies like this seem to point out that even mate selection based on "beauty" may rest on a more general pattern recognition system.
Science Blog covers the story. Click on for quotes from Science Blog and a link to the paper.
"It seems you don't need to postulate an unconscious calculator of mate value or any other 'programmed-brain' argument to explain why prototypical images are more attractive," Winkielman said. "The mental mechanism appears to be extremely simple: facilitate processing of certain objects and they ring a louder bell.
"This parsimonious explanation," he said, "accounts for cultural differences in beauty – and historical differences in beauty as well – because beauty basically depends on what you've been exposed to and what is therefore easy on your mind."
Link to the paper with subscription to Psychological Sciences
ABSTRACT—People tend to prefer highly prototypical stimuli—a phenomenon referred to as the beauty-in-averageness effect. A common explanation of this effect proposes that prototypicality signals mate value. Here we present three experiments testing whether prototypicality preference results from more general mechanisms—fluent processing of prototypes and preference for fluently processed stimuli. In two experiments, participants categorized and rated the attractiveness of random-dot patterns (Experiment 1) or common geometric patterns (Experiment 2) that varied in levels of prototypicality. In both experiments, prototypicality was a predictor of both fluency (categorization speed) and attractiveness. Critically, fluency mediated the effect of prototypicality on attractiveness, although some effect of prototypicality remained when fluency was controlled. The findings were the same whether or not participants explicitly considered the pattern's categorical membership, and whether or not categorization fluency was salient when they rated attractiveness. Experiment 3, using the psychophysiological technique of facial electromyography, confirmed that viewing abstract prototypes elicits quick positive affective reactions.
posted by Andrea Mates at 9:30 PM
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