Two experimental studies of undergraduate students in China found that if the skin of the face is made more homogenous (i.e., smoother), students perceive the face as prettier, even without noticing that the face has changed. Students participating in the studies judged pictures of faces with increased homogeneity of skin as prettier than before without being aware that the face has physically changed. The study was published in Frontiers in Psychology.
Attractiveness of one’s face is very important in social life. Research has shown that people tend to see attractive individuals as possessing many positive traits. People tend to be more tolerant of unethical behaviors from attractive individuals. Attractive individuals tend to be favored in college admission processes, get more fringe benefits at work, have improved likelihood of promotion and career success. This effect is known as the “what is good is beautiful effect.”
One of the most desirable traits of an attractive face in females is perfect facial skin. A multitude of studies have shown that female facial skin texture and color homogeneity are key properties on which male study participants based their attractiveness ratings.
“The faces with radiant and smooth skin can enhance perceptions of health and attractiveness and convey various positive impressions to the observers, while the faces with skin blemishes convey the impression of unhealthy and incompetent,” the study authors explained.
Similar results were also found in men. Female raters perceived male faces with more homogenous skin color as more attractive. When wrinkles and other irregularities were removed from faces of men aged 40-70, using picture editing in a research study, such faces were perceived as younger, healthier and more attractive than their original versions.
Aiming to explore whether people can notice when skin homogeneity of a face changes and whether attractiveness perception of the face will change after this intervention, study author Yu-Hao P. Sun and his colleagues conducted two experiments.
In the first experiment, 36 undergraduates were asked to compare pictures of faces and respond whether the faces shown are the same or different. Pairs of faces shown consisted of a photo of a face paired with a picture of the same face that was changed to a certain degree using a special software that made the skin of the face in the picture smoother.
Researchers used 14 different photographs of faces of young Chinese men and women (17-18 years of age, 7 men and 7 women) and each was modified using BeautyCam, v.10.0.70, to 0%, 30%, 45% and 100% beautification.
In study 2, there were 3 groups of participants and the same pictures and their beautified versions were shown. The first group was asked to choose whether the original face or the face in the image beautified to a certain degree is more attractive. The second group judged whether the original and the beautified face picture are the same or different. The third group was asked to rate the attractiveness of each of the faces shown. Each group completed two blocks of male and female faces in a random order and each beautified face was presented twice.
Results of the first experiment showed that the more the skin of the face in the picture was beautified, the better participants differentiated the original version from the beautified version of a face. When participants were presented two identical pictures of a face, they judged them different in 20.54% of cases. The percentage rises to 35.42% when one of the faces is beautified to 30%, to 49.50% on 45% beautification, and to 68.25% when one of the faces is beautified to 100%.
The researchers considered the “different” response in less than 50% of cases as indicating that participants cannot confidently tell the difference between faces, concluding that participants confidently differentiated the original only from the 100% beautified face.
The analysis of results of trials in the second experiment showed that the more homogenous the facial skin, the more attractive the face was perceived as. How often a beautified face was seen as more attractive followed a logarithmic curve – 30% beautified faces were seen as more attractive in around 75% of cases, but 45% and 100% beautified faces were seen as more attractive just a bit more often than the 30% beautified face (around 80% and around 90%).
When participants were asked to directly rate the attractiveness of different faces, they rated the more beautified faces as more attractive, but this tendency was relatively weak.
Finally, the different-same trial in the second experiment yielded the same results as in the first experiment – the more beautified the face was the more likely it was to be seen as different. Judging the faces shown as different happened a bit more often when female faces were shown. In general, facial skin beautification seemed to be more effective for women.
“Our findings showed that people’s judgment of facial physical change and attractiveness change was different with the manipulation of facial skin homogeneity. People’s judgments of changes in faces and changes in attractiveness of faces involve two different psychological processes, even though both of these changes result from manipulation of the homogeneity of the face’s skin,” the researchers concluded.
The paper sheds light on the relationship between beauty perception and skin properties. However, it also has limitations that need to be taken into account. Notably, all study participants were students and attractiveness evaluations were based on static pictures of faces of young people. It is possible that results of studies on people of different age evaluating attractiveness of people they see in person and of different age might not be the same. Additionally, both the people whose faces were in the pictures and participants were Chinese and studies on people from other cultures might not produce equal results.
The study, “Your face looks the same as before, only prettier: The facial skin homogeneity effects on face change detection and facial attractiveness perception”, was authored by Yu-Hao P. Sun, Xiaohui Zhang, Ningyan Lu, Jing Li, and Zhe Wang.
