Mechanisms for the Cognitive Processing of Attractiveness in Adult and Infant Faces: From the Evolutionary Perspective

The brain circuitry processing rewarding and aversive stimuli is hypothesized to be at the core of motivated behavior. In this study, discrete categories of beautiful faces are shown to have differing reward values and to differentially activate reward circuitry in human subjects. In particular, young heterosexual males rate pictures of beautiful males and females as attractive, but exert effort via a keypress procedure only to view pictures of attractive females. Functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T shows that passive viewing of beautiful female faces activates reward circuitry, in particular the nucleus accumbens. An extended set of subcortical and paralimbic reward regions also appear to follow aspects of the keypress rather than the rating procedures, suggesting that reward circuitry function does not include aesthetic assessment.

The faces we encounter throughout our lives make different impressions on us: Some are remembered at first glance, while others are forgotten. Previous work has found that the distinctiveness of a face influences its memorability--the degree to which face images are remembered or forgotten. Here, we generalize the concept of face memorability in a large-scale memory study. First, we find that memorability is an intrinsic feature of a face photograph--across observers some faces are consistently more remembered or forgotten than others--indicating that memorability can be used for measuring, predicting, and manipulating subsequent memories. Second, we determine the role that 20 personality, social, and memory-related traits play in face memorability. Whereas we find that certain traits (such as kindness, atypicality, and trustworthiness) contribute to face memorability, they do not suffice to explain the variance in memorability scores, even when accounting for noise and differences in subjective experience. This suggests that memorability itself is a consistent, singular measure of a face that cannot be reduced to a simple combination of personality and social facial attributes. We outline modern neuroscience questions that can be explored through the lens of memorability.

Faces are visual objects in our environment that provide strong social cues, with the eyes assuming particular importance. Here we show that the perceived attractiveness of an unfamiliar face increases brain activity in the ventral striatum of the viewer when meeting the person's eye, and decreases activity when eye gaze is directed away. Depending on the direction of gaze, attractiveness can thus activate dopaminergic regions that are strongly linked to reward prediction, indicating that central reward systems may be engaged during the initiation of social interactions.