Gender differences in memory processing of female facial attractiveness: evidence from event-related potentials

ABSTRACT

High rates of agreement in the judgment of facial attractiveness suggest universal principles of beauty. This study investigated gender differences in recognition memory processing of female facial attractiveness. Thirty-four Chinese heterosexual participants (17 females, 17 males) aged 18–24 years (mean age 21.63 ± 1.51 years) participated in the experiment which used event-related potentials (ERPs) based on a study-test paradigm. The behavioral data results showed that both men and women had significantly higher accuracy rates for attractive faces than for unattractive faces, but men reacted faster to unattractive faces. Gender differences on ERPs showed that attractive faces elicited larger early components such as P1, N170, and P2 in men than in women. The results indicated that the effects of recognition bias during memory processing modulated by female facial attractiveness are greater for men than women. Behavioral and ERP evidences indicate that men and women differ in their attentional adhesion to attractive female faces; different mating-related motives may guide the selective processing of attractive men and women. These findings establish a contribution of gender differences on female facial attractiveness during memory processing from an evolutionary perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• ERP
• gender differences
• facial attractiveness
• n170
• evolution

Acknowledgments

We thank all participants for their time and interest as well as the editor and reviewers for their valuable feedback. We also thank the editing by the professional service companies “Editage” and “ShineWrite”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported and granted by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation at Youth Project [31200787], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, HUST: (2016) to Yan Zhang, and it was also supported by Chinese Ministry of Education of Humanities and Social Sciences at Youth Project [13YJCZH193] to Bin Wei.