Facial redness increases men’s perceived healthiness and attractiveness
Date
01/06/2017Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Past research has shown that peripheral and facial redness influences perceptions of attractiveness for men viewing women. The current research investigated whether a parallel effect is present when women rate men with varying facial redness. In four experiments, women judged the attractiveness of men’s faces, which were presented with varying degrees of redness. We also examined perceived healthiness and other candidate variables as mediators of the red attractiveness effect. The results show that facial redness positively influences ratings of men’s attractiveness. Additionally, perceived healthiness was documented as a mediator of this effect, independent of other potential mediator variables. The current research emphasizes facial coloration as an important feature of social judgments.
Citation
Thorstenson , C A , Pazda , A D , Elliot , A J & Perrett , D I 2017 , ' Facial redness increases men’s perceived healthiness and attractiveness ' , Perception , vol. 46 , no. 6 , pp. 650-664 . https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006616680124
Publication
Perception
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0301-0066Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 the Authors. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created accepted version manuscript following peer review and as such may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0301006616680124
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