When attractiveness demands longer looks: The effects of situation and gender

Author(s)
Helmut Leder, Isabel Bohrn, Isabella Fuchs-Leitner, Pablo Tinio
Abstract

We investigated how aesthetics guides our exploration of the environment. We embedded attractive and nonattractive faces into complex, real-world scenes and measured eye movements during scene viewing. We examined whether attractive faces would elicit longer looks, which would suggest that the aesthetic response orients people toward the rewarding and pleasing aspects of the environment. Experiment 1 showed that mean fixation, mean first fixation, and total fixation durations were longer to attractive faces, and fixations were longest to female faces and by female perceivers. In Experiment 2, we examined whether these effects of attractiveness are sensitive to situational factors. When perceivers were subjected to a threat or social approach manipulation prior to viewing the scenes, we confirmed specific hypotheses concerning the two manipulations. In accordance with the hypothesis that males have higher aggression potential than females, there were no differences in fixation durations between attractive and nonattractive male faces in the threat condition. On the other hand, in the social approach condition, both female and male attractive faces received longer looks. These results suggest that the aesthetic response orients people not only to the pleasing aspects of their environment, but also to those features that are adaptively relevant.

Organisation(s)
External organisation(s)
Freie Universität Berlin (FU)
Journal
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
Volume
63
Pages
1858-1871
No. of pages
14
ISSN
1747-0218
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080%2F17470211003605142
Publication date
09-2010
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
5010 Psychology
Portal url
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/when-attractiveness-demands-longer-looks-the-effects-of-situation-and-gender(3376760a-c3ac-4894-af34-13baa204aa09).html