Original Article
How portraits turned their eyes upon us: Visual preferences and demographic change in cultural evolution

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2013.01.004Get rights and content

Abstract

It has often been suggested that innate features of the human mind could make some cultural forms more successful than others. This paper presents a case study consistent with this “cognitive attraction” hypothesis. Numerous studies show that direct eye-gaze catches the attention of adults and newborns. Adults find it more attractive. We explore one possible cultural consequence of this cognitive appeal. Among XVIth century European portraits, direct-gaze paintings are more likely to be featured in today's art books. In Renaissance Europe, the proportion of paintings that stare at the viewer grows gradually, strongly, and remains prevalent for centuries. A demographic analysis of this shift shows that it was due to the arrival of new generations of painters. Those artists show a preference for direct-gaze portraits as soon as they start painting, suggesting that they acquired the new style in the years of their apprenticeship. The preferences of those painters and of contemporary art critics seem consistent with the innate attentional bias that favours direct-gaze faces. The structure of the “Renaissance gaze shift” bears evidence for the importance of demographic turn-over in cultural change.

Introduction

You probably have in your wallet, or on your hard disk, a representation of a human face that seems to be looking out of the picture into your eyes. This visual illusion is so common we hardly notice it. Yet its effects on our mind are far from trivial (Wollaston, 1824). As compared to a slightly averted gaze, direct eye-gaze in pictures facilitates identification and gender assignment (Macrae et al., 2002, Vuilleumier et al., 2005). Direct eye-gaze is attention-grabbing as well. Staring faces make more potent distractors than averted-gaze faces (Conty et al., 2010, Senju and Hasegawa, 2005). Direct-gaze faces are more arousing, as evidenced by physiological measures such as galvanic skin response (Nichols & Champness, 1971). Direct-gaze pictures of faces (even neutral faces) are rated by subjects as more “likable” or “attractive” (Conway et al., 2008, Ewing et al., 2010) — but see Hietanen, Leppänen, Peltola, Linna-Aho, and Ruuhiala, (2008). Some of these effects of direct eye-gaze are probably due to innate features of our visual system. Children as young as three days old preferentially look at direct-gaze pictures of still faces (Farroni, Csibra, Simion, & Johnson, 2002). Direct eye-gaze facilitates identification in 4 months-old as it does in adults (Farroni, Massaccesi, Menon, & Johnson, 2007).

Several authors have suggested that open eyes facing the viewer were ubiquitous in various artistic traditions, given their psychological impact (Cross, 2003, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1988). Yet for all their cognitive appeal, direct-gaze depictions of the human face are not a universal standard, far from it. Identity documents are overwhelmingly direct-gazing (indeed that is often a legal requirement). So were Greek and Egyptian funerary portraits. Yet, in many other traditions (Indian and Japanese portraits, for instance) direct eye-gaze is hardly ever present. Most portrait traditions are constrained by rigorous (and possibly arbitrary) norms concerning the sitter's pose. In many cases, these artistic standards can mesh with local norms governing gaze behaviour. Many cultures implicitly forbid staring in some contexts. Those norms may have an incidence on portraits, especially when they are painted for ritual purposes. Korean official portraits, for instance, came from a court society where etiquette frowned upon gazing. Asked to check that the King's portrait was faithful, some officials remarked that they could not know: they had often been in the King's presence, but never looked at his face (Sŏng-mi, 2008 p. 120). Thus, there is no denying that gaze direction in portrait traditions varies a lot. This paper contends, however, that in traditions where gaze direction is left free to vary, so that we find both averted and direct-gaze portraits, the latter style should enjoy more success and, over time, become the default option.

A growing body of work shows that a “cognitive attraction” drives many cases of cultural evolution (Sperber & Hirschfeld, 2004). Widespread cognitive biases appear to constrain the evolution of cultural forms, from folk tales (Norenzayan, Atran, Faulkner, & Schaller, 2006) and urban legends (Heath, Bell, & Sternberg, 2001) to table manners (Nichols, 2002) and religious beliefs (Boyer & Ramble, 2001). Concerning portraits, Costa and Corazza (2006) show that painters exaggerate “neotenic” features in their portraits: traits like big eyes or round faces, which make faces seem more attractive to viewers across many cultures and from the youngest age.

If cognitive attraction played a role in the evolution of paintings, it should contribute more to the fame of direct-gaze portraits. It should favour, over time, a gradual replacement of averted-gaze portraits with direct-gaze portraits. We should also be able to identify the drivers of this evolution, and identify the kind of mechanism that explains the change (e.g., individual learning or demographic change). Each one of these questions asks how cultural evolution and cognitive attraction, two phenomena that are often studied separately, may influence one another. To answer these questions, we used a quantitative analysis of Renaissance portraits (Mcmanus and Humphrey, 1973, Tyler, 1998). Three studies looked at the effect of cognitive attraction on the evolution of direct eye-gaze from different angles. Study 1 shows that direct-gaze portraits are cognitively attractive with today's critics: they are more likely to be featured in art books. Study 2 shows a sustained shift in the Renaissance portrait traditions, favouring direct-gaze portraits. Study 3 shows that the shift was due to the arrival of new generations of painters, not to a change in the way sitters posed, to a change in the style of individual painters, or to a preservation bias.

Section snippets

Study 1: Did direct-gaze portraits become more famous than others?

European portraiture was chosen because (unlike most portrait traditions) it produced both averted-gaze and direct-gaze portraits. (A similar tradition, Korean portraiture, was studied as well with similar results. See Electronic Supplementary Materials, 1, available on the journal's Web site at www.ehbonline.org, and our conclusion). Our investigation focuses on the XVIth century (a period that is as well studied as the XVth century and was much more productive). European portraiture is a

Analysis and results

The same sample used in Study 1 was used for this study. A logistic regression was run, using the direction of gaze (direct or averted) as the dependent variable. The predicting variables were the painting's date (measured in decades), the sitter's status, the painter's national school and the sitter's sex. Results are displayed in Table 2. The model we obtained predicts the presence or absence of direct eye-gaze in a portrait with an acceptable fit.

A strong (and significant) effect of the date

Study 3: Was the shift due to a change in painters or to a change of painters?

There is a way one can rule out the “Photo Booth Hypothesis” and the “Learning Hypothesis”. The respective influences of painter-independent changes, changes in painters and changes of painters can be teased out by measuring the effect of three parameters on portrait gaze: the painter's date of birth (hereafter called the generation variable), his age at the time he made the portrait, and the date of the portrait's execution.

Conclusion

The view that a general preference for direct eye-gaze influenced XVIth century portraiture was tested in three different ways. In Study 1, we saw that direct-gaze portraits were more likely to be selected by books gathering the “best” paintings of their tradition. Study 2 showed that Renaissance portraiture gradually evolved towards a strong predominance of direct eye-gaze. Study 3 showed that this shift was due to the gradual replacement of early painters by new generations of painters, who

Supplementary Materials

The following are the Supplementary data to this article.

ESM.pdf

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Réka Finta, Jay Fogelman, Mikołaj Hernik, Olivier Mascaro, Dan Sperber, Paul Taylor, and an anonymous reviewer for their help.

References (37)

  • W. Croft

    Explaining Language Change

    (2001)
  • R.G. Cross

    The role of evolved perceptual biases in art and design

  • I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt

    The biological foundations of aesthetics

  • L. Ewing et al.

    Have you got the look? Gaze direction affects judgements of facial attractiveness

    Visual Cognition

    (2010)
  • T. Farroni et al.

    Eye contact detection in humans from birth

    PNAS

    (2002)
  • C. Gilbert

    Italian art 1400–1500: sources and documents

    (1980)
  • V. Ginsburgh et al.

    De la narration à la consécration

  • A. Hauser

    The Social History of Art - Renaissance

    (1951)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text