Data from: The boundary of holistic processing in the appraisal of facial attractiveness

Facial attractiveness is often studied on the basis of the internal facial features alone. This study investigated how this exclusion of the external features affects the perception of attractiveness. We studied the effects of two most commonly used methods of exclusion, where the shape of an occluding mask was defined by either the facial outline or an oval. Participants rated attractiveness of the same faces under these conditions. Results showed that faces were consistently rated more attractive when they were masked by an oval shape rather than by their outline (Experiment 1). Attractive faces were more strongly affected by this effect than were less attractive faces when participants were able to control the viewing time. However, unattractive faces benefited more from this effect when the same face stimuli were presented briefly for only 20 ms (Experiment 2). Further manipulation confirmed that the effect was mainly due to the occlusion of a larger area of the external features rather than the regular and symmetrical features of the oval shape (Experiment 3) or lacks contextual cues about the face boundary (Experiment 4). The effect was only relative to masked faces, with no advantage over unmasked faces (Experiment 5), and is likely a result of the interaction between the shape of a mask and the internal features of the face. This holistic effect in the appraisal of facial attractiveness is striking because the oval shape of the mask is not a part of the face but is the edge of an occluding object.

面部吸引力的相关研究通常仅基于面部内部特征开展。本研究旨在探究这种排除面部外部特征的实验处理，会对人脸吸引力的感知产生何种影响。我们针对两种最常用的外部特征排除范式展开了研究：遮挡掩码（occluding mask）的形状分别由面部轮廓（facial outline）或椭圆形（oval）定义。实验参与者会在上述两种条件下，对同一组人脸刺激的吸引力进行评分。实验1结果表明：采用椭圆形掩码遮挡的人脸，其吸引力评分始终高于采用面部轮廓掩码遮挡的人脸。当参与者可自主控制观看时长时，高吸引力人脸受该掩码效应的影响程度显著高于低吸引力人脸；但当人脸刺激仅以20毫秒的时长快速呈现时（实验2），低吸引力人脸反而从该效应中获益更多。后续操控实验进一步证实，该效应主要源于遮挡了面部外部特征的更大面积区域，而非椭圆形掩码本身的规则对称属性（实验3），亦非缺失人脸边界的背景线索（实验4）。该效应仅存在于经过掩码遮挡的人脸中，相较于未被遮挡的人脸并无评分优势（实验5）；其本质大概率是掩码形状与人脸内部特征之间的交互作用所导致的。这种用于人脸吸引力评估的整体加工效应格外引人注目，因为椭圆形掩码并非人脸的组成部分，仅为遮挡物体的边缘。