Distorted facial perception of the partner

The present research studies the emotional and electrophysiological response of a person to seeing a distorted image of his or her partner's face in order to measure the impact of physical appearance on interpersonal relationships. Studying the effect of physical appearance on interpersonal relationships is of great relevance to identify projection biases that may act as a mechanism of attraction to a partner and how attraction may be diminished by physical changes (aging, body changes, etc.) [5]. Although it is often argued that there are other more important aspects such as personality, values and affinity to maintain a relationship, some previous evidence reveals that there must be a minimum of physical attraction [12]. Assessing the effect of distorted facial perception of the partner can help to analyze how projection biases affect the emotional response and physical attraction that people feel with their partners. For this work, 15 participants with partners between the ages of 20 and 30 were recruited. They were asked for 10 facial photos of their partners. The images were edited in terms of age distortions, facial enlargement, deformity (ugly), low quality with motion effect and sadness effect. Once the facial distortions were applied, each participant was randomly shown a total of 30 photos (one undistorted by two distorted faces) for 3 seconds each photo. After each photo, an emotional test was applied to assess the level of liking based on the 4-point hedonistic scale (dislike, indifference, liking and enjoyment). The database contains the raw and preprocessed recorded data, volunteer information such as age and gender, subjective evaluation, information on the channels used. The results show that there is an increase in the amplitude of the P300 wave which shows that people present a different emotional reaction between normal and distorted photos due to the projection and facial adaptation biases they have towards their partner.