Gender differences in the motivational processing of facial beauty

doi:10.1016/j.lmot.2007.09.002

Learning and Motivation

Volume 39, Issue 2, May 2008, Pages 136-145

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2007.09.002 Get rights and content

Abstract

Gender may be involved in the motivational processing of facial beauty. This study applied a behavioral probe, known to activate brain motivational regions, to healthy heterosexual subjects. Matched samples of men and women were administered two tasks: (a) key pressing to change the viewing time of average or beautiful female or male facial images, and (b) rating the attractiveness of these images. Men expended more effort (via the key-press task) to extend the viewing time of the beautiful female faces. Women displayed similarly increased effort for beautiful male and female images, but the magnitude of this effort was substantially lower than that of men for beautiful females. Heterosexual facial attractiveness ratings were comparable in both groups. These findings demonstrate heterosexual specificity of facial motivational targets for men, but not for women. Moreover, heightened drive for the pursuit of heterosexual beauty in the face of regular valuational assessments, displayed by men, suggests a gender-specific incentive sensitization phenomenon.

Section snippets

Participants

For clarity of presentation, study participants are referred to as “men” and “women” and facial images as “male” and “female”. Study subjects comprised healthy individuals, as determined by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders (SCID-I/NP; First, Spitzer, Gibbon, & Williams, 2002). Their self-reported heterosexual status was confirmed with the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (KSOG; Klein, Sepekoff, & Wolf, 1985) that assessed the sexual self (attraction, fantasy, and

Results

Men and women groups were similar with respect to age [M = 28.7, SD = 8.4 vs. M = 25.0, SD = 3.3; t(33) = 1.60, p = .10] and years of education [M = 15.7, SD = 1.5 vs. 15.8 , SD = 1.5; t(33) = −0.20, p = .84)]. Fig. 2 displays the rating and net key-press data for each category. Overall, the two groups did not differ in the attractiveness ratings [group effect: F(1, 33) = 2.92, p = .10], but beautiful faces’ ratings significantly exceeded those of the average faces [Faces Type effect: F(3, 99) = 127.90, p < .0001] with men

Discussion

The results of the current study provide empirical laboratory-based evidence for the motivational value of beauty. Our interpretation that the observed gender differences are related to motivational drives of the viewers (Senior, 2003) rather than to social acceptance or desirability of prolonged viewing behavior towards opposite sexes is supported by recent work demonstrating stronger fMRI activations within motivational/reward regions by female than by male faces for heterosexual men and by

Acknowledgment

The authors thank Dr. Alumit Ishai for her insightful comments on the manuscript.

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Sexual dimorphism has been proposed as one of the facial traits to have evolved through sexual selection and to affect attractiveness perception. Even with numerous studies documenting its effect on attractiveness and mate choice, the neurophysiological correlates of the perception of sexual dimorphism are not yet fully understood. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during visualisation of faces that had been previously transformed in shape to appear more masculine or more feminine. The participants’ task consisted of judging the attractiveness of half of the total number of faces, and performing a sex discrimination task on the other half. Both early and late potentials were modulated by the sex of faces, whereas the effect of the sexually dimorphic transform was mainly visible in the P2 (positive deflection around 200 ms after stimulus onset), EPN (early posterior negativity) and LPP (late positive potential) components. There was an effect of sexual dimorphism on P2 and EPN amplitudes when female participants visualised male faces, which may indicate that masculinity is particularly attended to when viewing opposite sex members. Also, ERP results seem to support the idea of sex differences in social categorisation decisions regarding faces, although differences were not evident on behavioural results. In general, these findings contribute to a better understanding of how humans perceive sexually dimorphic characteristics in other individuals’ faces and how they affect attractiveness judgements.
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Citation Excerpt :
In Study 2, attractiveness had a positive effect on key-press scores for men's faces, indicating that more attractive men's faces were more rewarding to women. This pattern of results is consistent with previous research that also reported positive effects of attractiveness on this measure of the reward value of men's faces (Hahn et al., 2014, 2015; Levy et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2014). While both studies show that women generally discriminate men's faces along the attractiveness dimension, we found no evidence that the relationships between attractiveness and memory for men's faces or attractiveness and the reward value of men's faces were significantly different for partnered and unpartnered women or for partnered women who scored above or below the median on a combined relationship happiness and commitment score.
Romantic relationships can have positive effects on health and reproductive fitness. Given that attractive potential alternative mates can pose a threat to romantic relationships, some researchers have proposed that partnered individuals discriminate opposite-sex individuals less along the physical attractiveness dimension than do unpartnered individuals. This effect is proposed to devalue attractive (i.e., high quality) alternative mates and help maintain romantic relationships. Here we investigated this issue by comparing the effects of men's attractiveness on partnered and unpartnered women's performance on two response measures for which attractiveness is known to be important: memory for face photographs (Study 1) and the reward value of faces (Study 2). Consistent with previous research, women's memory was poorer for face photographs of more attractive men (Study 1) and more attractive men's faces were more rewarding (Study 2). However, in neither study were these effects of attractiveness modulated by women's partnership status or partnered women's reported commitment to or happiness with their romantic relationship. These results do not support the proposal that partnered women discriminate potential alternative mates along the physical attractiveness dimension less than do unpartnered women.

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^☆: This work was supported by Grant D.A. #017959 (I.E.) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

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Gender differences in the motivational processing of facial beauty☆

Abstract

Section snippets

Participants

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgment

Neuron

Brain and Cognition

Trends in Neurosciences

Biological Psychology

Psychiatry Research

International Journal of Psychophysiology

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

Current Biology

Neuropsychologia

Neuron

Neuron

The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: The case for incentive salience

Psychopharmacology (Berl)

Neural coding of reward-prediction error signals during classical conditioning with attractive faces

Journal of Neurophysiology

Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating

Psychological Review

Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness: Quasiexperiments on the sociobiology of female facial beauty

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex