The Attractiveness Halo Effect and the Babyface Stereotype in Older and Younger Adults: Similarities, Own-Age Accentuation, and Older Adult Positivity Effects

Abstract

Background/Study Context: Two well-documented phenomena in person perception are the attractiveness halo effect (more positive impressions of more attractive people), and the babyface stereotype (more childlike impressions of more babyfaced people), shown by children, young adults (YA), and people from diverse cultures. This is the first study to systematically investigate these face stereotypes in older adults (OA) and to compare effects for younger and older adult faces.

Methods: YA and OA judges rated competence, health, hostility, untrustworthiness, attractiveness, and babyfaceness of older and younger neutral expression faces. Multilevel modeling assessed effects of rater age and face age on appearance stereotypes.

Results: Like YA, OA showed both the attractiveness halo effect and the babyface stereotype. However, OA showed weaker effects of attractiveness on impressions of untrustworthiness, and only OA associated higher babyfaceness with greater competence. There also was own-age accentuation, with both OA and YA showing stronger face stereotypes for faces closer to their own age. Age differences in the strength of the stereotypes reflected an OA positivity effect shown in more influence of positive facial qualities on impressions or less influence of negative ones, rather than vice versa.

Conclusion: OA own-age biases, previously shown in emotion, age, and identity recognition, and OA positivity effects, previously revealed in attention, memory, and social judgments, also influence age differences in the strength and content of appearance stereotypes. Future research should assess implications of these results for age-related differences in susceptibility to appearance biases that YA have shown in socially significant domains, such as judicial and personnel decisions.

Notes

¹Face age significantly moderated the effect of attractiveness on ratings of hostile (β = .043, SE = .022, p = .051) and untrustworthy (β = −.038, SE = .020, p = .066), revealing a weaker halo effect for younger faces that did not vary with rater age.

²Analyses of variance on attractiveness and babyface ratings revealed that OA rated the faces as significantly more attractive (YA: M = 2.92, SD = .71; OA: M = 3.49, SD = .71; F(1, 90) = 15.8, p < .001), but there was no rater age difference in ratings of babyfaceness (YA: M = 3.15, SD = .76; OA: M = 3.01, SD = .90; F(1, 90) = .55). In addition, younger faces were rated as more attractive (younger faces: M = 3.34, SD = .78; older faces: M = 3.07,SD = .92; F(1, 90) = 11.2, p = .001) and more babyfaced (younger faces: M = 3.33, SD = .86; older faces: M = 2.83, SD = .95; F(1, 90) = 49.3, p < .001). The face age effect for babyface ratings was not moderated by rater age, F(1, 90) = 1.08, but there was a marginally significant moderation for attractiveness ratings, F(1, 90) = 3.07 p = .083. Comparisons within each rater age revealed that OA ratings of the attractiveness of younger and older faces were not significantly different (younger faces: M = 3.55, SD = .77; older faces: M = 3.43, SD = .82; t(47) = 1.52, p = .22), whereas YA rated younger faces as more attractive (younger faces: M = 3.12, SD = .73; older faces: M = 2.72, SD = .88; t(47) = 3.61, p = .001). Although YA showed own-age accentuation in attractiveness ratings, they did not show any own-age accentuation in the halo effect. Thus, these results indicate that own-age accentuation found in the strength of the babyface and attractiveness stereotypes cannot be attributed to own-age accentuation in mean ratings of attractiveness or babyfaceness.