Original article
Visible skin color distribution plays a role in the perception of age, attractiveness, and health in female faces

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.08.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Evolutionary psychologists have proposed that preferences for facial characteristics, such as symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism, may reflect adaptations for mate choice because they signal aspects of mate quality. Here, we show that facial skin color distribution significantly influences the perception of age and attractiveness of female faces, independent of facial form and skin surface topography. A set of three-dimensional shape-standardized stimulus faces—varying only in terms of skin color distribution due to variation in biological age and cumulative photodamage—was rated by a panel of naive judges for a variety of perceptual endpoints relating to age, health, and beauty. Shape- and topography-standardized stimulus faces with the homogeneous skin color distribution of young people were perceived as younger and received significantly higher ratings for attractiveness and health than analogous stimuli with the relatively inhomogeneous skin color distribution of more elderly people. Thus, skin color distribution, independent of facial form and skin surface topography, seems to have a major influence on the perception of female facial age and judgments of attractiveness and health as they may signal aspects of underlying physiological condition of an individual relevant for mate choice. We suggest that studies on human physical attractiveness and its perception need to consider the influence of visible skin condition driven by color distribution and differentiate between such effects and beauty-related traits due to facial shape and skin topography.

Introduction

Coloration of feather and skin is known to influence sexual attractiveness in a wide variety of nonhuman animals (Andersson, 1994), and studies on pigmentation in birds have suggested that color signals may directly signal immunocompetence and health (Blount et al., 2003, McGraw & Ardia, 2003). A number of studies with birds have demonstrated that carotenoid-based coloration affects mate choice (e.g., McGraw & Hill, 2000). Although physical attractiveness in humans and its perception have been studied extensively in the past few years (see, for a review, Fink & Penton-Voak, 2002, Grammer et al., 2003), there is only limited information available on the potential signaling value of visible skin color. It has been suggested that skin color has a significant effect on human mate selection since paler skin is a youthful and desired feature (Darwin, 1871, Frost, 1988, Van den Berghe & Frost, 1986), especially in women, but, to our knowledge, there have been only two empirical tests of this hypothesis in women.

Fink, Grammer, and Thornhill (2001) demonstrated that women's facial skin texture affects male judgment of facial attractiveness and found that homogeneous skin (i.e., an even distribution of features relating to both skin color and skin surface topography) is most attractive. Further, it was found that a slightly reddish skin (which may indicate more efficient blood circulation) is considered attractive and healthy. Analogous to the manner in which coloration plays a role in mate choice in birds, therefore, visible color and color distribution in human facial skin may provide an indication of the age, health, and attractiveness of the respective individual. More recently, Jones, Little, Burt, and Perrett (2004) demonstrated that ratings of attractiveness of small skin patches extracted from the left and right cheeks of male facial images significantly correlated with ratings of facial attractiveness. It was also found that apparent health of skin influences male facial attractiveness, independent of shape information.

The findings of these two studies lend some support to the notion that skin color distribution influences facial attractiveness and suggest that attractive physical traits positively influence the perception of an individual's health. However, both studies used facial photographs of Caucasian men and women at college age (i.e., 18–25 years), which is not representative with regard to the variance in skin condition, which is probably small within that age range and may, thus, only provide information about a particular age group. Moreover, both studies were designed to control for possible age effects of different skin conditions rather than to study age-related variance of skin condition and its effects on facial attractiveness. Some recent evidence for the association between perception of attractiveness and skin condition, though in males, comes from Roberts et al. (2005). These authors report that patches of skin from the cheeks of men being heterozygous at three loci in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) were judged healthier than skin of homozygous men, and these ratings correlated with attractiveness judgments of the faces.

All those studies that investigated apparent attractiveness and health of skin did not differentiate between skin surface topography and skin color distribution. However, in view of evidence from medical studies, this seems to be of particular relevance. In addition to changes in skin appearance due to chronological aging, there is consensus among the scientific and medical communities that exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) in ordinary sunlight is a major factor in the etiology of the progressive, undesirable changes in the appearance of skin (chronic photodamage/photoaging) and in the risk of skin cancer (American Academy of Dermatology Consensus Conference, 1988, Bergfeld et al., 1997, Council of Scientific Affairs, 1989, Fisher et al., 1997, IARC, 1992, IARC, 2001, National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Conference Statement, 1989, Wlaschek et al., 2001). Caucasian skin is particularly prone to ultraviolet (UV) light injury (e.g., de Gruijl, 1999), and episodes of sunburn, even in childhood, have been shown to be associated with an increased risk factor for photocarcinogenesis, photoaging, and photoimmunosuppression (e.g., Naldi et al., 2005). It is likely that organisms with a higher resistance against such risk factors are also favored in contests for a mate and are, therefore, perceived as more attractive.

The present study investigated the perception of facial age and attractiveness in relation to apparent skin color distribution. Since age and attractiveness are known to be influenced by facial form (Perrett, May, & Yoshikawa, 1994) and facial furrows (Leveque & Goubanova, 2004), a set of three-dimensional (3D) shape-standardized stimulus faces was generated, which varied only in terms of visible skin color distribution and chronological age, respectively. We hypothesized that visible facial skin color distribution significantly influences the perception of biological age and attractiveness of females. Clearly, shape-standardized faces with the applied skin color distribution of young people should be perceived younger, healthier, and more attractive than shape-standardized faces that receive the skin color distribution of older people. If this hypothesis were true, it would argue for an influence of visible skin color distribution on the perception of female facial attractiveness.

Section snippets

Stimulus material

A total of 170 British women from the ages of 11 to 76 years (mean age=37.39, S.D.=17.35) were recruited and photographed from three views: frontal, left, and right profiles. This was achieved using a custom digital imaging rig comprising a 6.2-megapixel digital single-lens reflex camera fitted with a Nikkor 45-mm 1:2.8P lens (Nikon Corporation, Tokyo, Japan), a fully cross-polarized multiple flash lighting system, and a chin rest to ensure accurate, reproducible positioning of subjects and

Results

The estimated biological age (aggregated estimates from all judges for each face) of facial images ranged from 17.8 to 36.7 years (mean age=24.47, S.D.=7.14), a span of some 20 years. A one-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov goodness-of-fit test indicated that actual and estimated age and all three attributes were normally distributed (actual age: Z=1.043, p=.227; estimated age: Z=.989, p=.282; attractive: Z=.410, p=.996; healthy: Z=.600, p=.864; youthful: Z=.883, p=.416). There was a significant

Discussion

The results presented suggest that visible skin color distribution plays an important role in subjective evaluation of female facial beauty. Our investigation further indicates that people judge female faces on other attributes in addition to facial shape and form. It was also found that males performed better with this task than females. To clarify this, we standardized the stimuli used in the present study with respect to their facial form and we removed information relating to skin surface

Acknowledgments

Steven J.C. Gaulin, Maria Burquest, and three anonymous referees provided valuable comments and suggestions to a previous version of the manuscript.

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    This project was funded by Procter & Gamble Company (Cincinnati, USA).

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