Temporal shifts in eye gaze and facial expressions independently contribute to the perceived attractiveness of unfamiliar faces

ABSTRACT

We investigated whether attractiveness ratings of expressive faces would be affected by gaze shifts towards or away from the observer. In all experiments, effects of facial expression were found, with higher attractiveness ratings to positive over negative expressions, irrespective of effects of gaze-shifts. In the first experiment faces with gaze shifts away from the observer were preferred. However, when the dynamics of the gaze shift was disrupted, by adding an intermediate delay, the effect of direction of gaze shift disappeared. By manipulating the relative duration of each gaze direction during a gaze shift we found higher attractiveness ratings to faces with a longer duration of direct gaze, particularly in the initial exposure to a face. Our findings suggest that although the temporal dynamics of eye gaze and facial expressions influence the aesthetic evaluation of faces, these cues appear to act independently rather than in an integrated manner for social perception.

KEYWORDS:

• Face perception
• gaze duration
• gaze shift
• expression
• facial attractiveness

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Paula Dempsey and Alan O'Dowd for their help in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Note that here the “direct gaze first” and “averted gaze first” conditions were equivalent to the “gaze shift away” and “gaze shift towards” conditions respectively in Experiment 1a.

2. Mean attractiveness ratings to the 300:1700 condition = 39.12, SD = 12.46; the 1000:1000 condition = 34.04, SD = 12.37; and the 1700:300 condition = 41.24, SD = 12.1.

3. 300:1700 condition: mean rating for gaze shift away from observer = 39.1, SD = 21.4; mean rating for gaze towards the observer = 39.77, SD = 23.23; mean difference = 0.66, SD = 3.27, p = 0.341, Cohen's d = 0.03.

4. 1000:1000 condition: mean rating for gaze shift away from observer = 34.44, SD = 17.78; mean rating for gaze towards the observer = 34.4, SD = 19.34; mean difference = 0.038, SD = 2.72, p = 0.947, Cohen's d = 0.0022.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by Science Foundation Ireland, Principal Investigator award to FNN, project number [10/IN.1/13003] and Trinity College Dublin Postgraduate Research Scholarship awarded to PKH.