scholarly journals The boundary of holistic processing in the appraisal of facial attractiveness

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 171616
Author(s):  
Chang Hong Liu ◽  
Wenfeng Chen

Facial attractiveness is often studied on the basis of the internal facial features alone. This study investigated how this exclusion of the external features affects the perception of attractiveness. We studied the effects of two most commonly used methods of exclusion, where the shape of an occluding mask was defined by either the facial outline or an oval. Participants rated attractiveness of the same faces under these conditions. Results showed that faces were consistently rated more attractive when they were masked by an oval shape rather than by their outline (Experiment 1). Attractive faces were more strongly affected by this effect than were less attractive faces when participants were able to control the viewing time. However, unattractive faces benefited more from this effect when the same face stimuli were presented briefly for only 20 ms (Experiment 2). Further manipulation confirmed that the effect was mainly due to the occlusion of a larger area of the external features rather than the regular and symmetrical features of the oval shape (Experiment 3) or lacks contextual cues about the face boundary (Experiment 4). The effect was only relative to masked faces, with no advantage over unmasked faces (Experiment 5), and is likely a result of the interaction between the shape of a mask and the internal features of the face. This holistic effect in the appraisal of facial attractiveness is striking, because the oval shape of the mask is not a part of the face but is the edge of an occluding object.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dexian He ◽  
Clifford Ian Workman ◽  
Xianyou He ◽  
Anjan Chatterjee

A well-documented “beauty-is-good” stereotype is expressed in the expectation that physically attractive people have more positive characteristics. Recent evidence also finds that unattractive faces are associated with negative character inferences. Is what is good (bad) also beautiful (ugly)? Whether this conflation of aesthetic and moral values is bidirectional is not known. This study tested the hypothesis that complementary “good-is-beautiful” and “bad-is-ugly” stereotypes bias aesthetic judgments. Using highly controlled face stimuli, this pre-registered study examined whether moral character influences perceptions of attractiveness for different ages and sexes of faces. Compared to faces paired with non-moral vignettes, those paired with prosocial vignettes were rated significantly more attractive, confident, and friendlier. The opposite pattern characterized faces paired with antisocial vignettes. A significant interaction between vignette type and the age of the face was detected for attractiveness. Moral transgressions affected attractiveness more negatively for younger than older faces. Sex-related differences were not detected. These results suggest information about moral character affects our judgments about facial attractiveness. Better people are considered more attractive. These findings suggest that beliefs about moral goodness and physical beauty influence each other bidirectionally.


Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030100662110155
Author(s):  
Jia Lin ◽  
Guomei Zhou

Human face processing has been attributed to holistic processing. Here, we ask whether humans are sensitive to configural information when perceiving facial attractiveness. By referring to a traditional Chinese aesthetic theory—Three Forehead and Five Eyes—we generated a series of faces that differed in spacing between facial features. We adopted a two-alternative forced-choice task in Experiment 1 and a rating task in Experiment 2 to assess attractiveness. Both tasks showed a consistent result: The faces which fit the Chinese aesthetic theory were chosen or rated as most attractive. This effect of configural information on facial attractiveness was larger for faces with highly attractive features than for faces with low attractive features. These findings provide experimental evidence for the traditional Chinese aesthetic theory. This issue can be further explored from the perspective of culture in the future.


2005 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 200-207
Author(s):  
Dusan Djordjevic ◽  
Neda Stefanovic ◽  
Branislav Glisic

Treatment plan in contemporary orthodontics cannot be imagine without analyzing soft tissue facial characteristics besides assessment of jaw and dental relationships. Aim. Using a questionnaire, we aimed this study at establishing facial characteristics, in relation to sagittal and vertical facial ratios, which are considered aesthetically acceptable, and which could be altered by the means orthodontic treatment. Material and Method. The research was conducted in persons from 23 to 30 years of age whose photographs were taken in standard conditions. Photographs of three patients with different facial profiles were chosen (Class I, Class II and Class III). Every photo was modified in six new profiles by changing facial features. This included mesial and distal shift of maxilla and mandible, as well as increase and decrease of lower facial height. Results. The results showed that straight profile, which is most often present in normal jaw relationships, is considered the most beautiful, furthermore slightly convex profiles are also considered very attractive. Convex profile is connected with distal jaw relationship and its intensity affects facial attractiveness. Concave profile in patients with mesial jaw relationship is aesthetically the least acceptable.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haruo Hosoya ◽  
Aapo Hyvärinen

AbstractExperimental studies have revealed evidence of both parts-based and holistic representations of objects and faces in the primate visual system. However, it is still a mystery how such seemingly contradictory types of processing can coexist within a single system. Here, we propose a novel theory called mixture of sparse coding models, inspired by the formation of category-specific subregions in the inferotemporal (IT) cortex. We developed a hierarchical network that constructed a mixture of two sparse coding submodels on top of a simple Gabor analysis. The submodels were each trained with face or non-face object images, which resulted in separate representations of facial parts and object parts. Importantly, evoked neural activities were modeled by Bayesian inference, which had a top-down explaining-away effect that enabled recognition of an individual part to depend strongly on the category of the whole input. We show that this explaining-away effect was indeed crucial for the units in the face submodel to exhibit significant selectivity to face images over object images in a similar way to actual face-selective neurons in the macaque IT cortex. Furthermore, the model explained, qualitatively and quantitatively, several tuning properties to facial features found in the middle patch of face processing in IT as documented by Freiwald, Tsao, and Livingstone (2009). These included, in particular, tuning to only a small number of facial features that were often related to geometrically large parts like face outline and hair, preference and anti-preference of extreme facial features (e.g., very large/small inter-eye distance), and reduction of the gain of feature tuning for partial face stimuli compared to whole face stimuli. Thus, we hypothesize that the coding principle of facial features in the middle patch of face processing in the macaque IT cortex may be closely related to mixture of sparse coding models.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieke Curfs ◽  
Rob Holland ◽  
Jose Kerstholt ◽  
Daniel Wigboldus
Keyword(s):  

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 887-897
Author(s):  
Vishal Paika ◽  
Er. Pankaj Bhambri

The face is the feature which distinguishes a person. Facial appearance is vital for human recognition. It has certain features like forehead, skin, eyes, ears, nose, cheeks, mouth, lip, teeth etc which helps us, humans, to recognize a particular face from millions of faces even after a large span of time and despite large changes in their appearance due to ageing, expression, viewing conditions and distractions such as disfigurement of face, scars, beard or hair style. A face is not merely a set of facial features but is rather but is rather something meaningful in its form.In this paper, depending on the various facial features, a system is designed to recognize them. To reveal the outline of the face, eyes, ears, nose, teeth etc different edge detection techniques have been used. These features are extracted in the term of distance between important feature points. The feature set obtained is then normalized and are feed to artificial neural networks so as to train them for reorganization of facial images.


Author(s):  
M Mazhar Celikoyar ◽  
Michael F Perez ◽  
M Ilhan Akbas ◽  
Oguzhan Topsakal

Abstract Background Facial features and measurements are utilized to analyze patients’ faces for various reasons, including surgical planning, scientific communications, patient-surgeon communications, and post-surgery evaluations. Objectives There are numerous descriptions regarding these features and measurements scattered throughout the literature and we did not encounter a current compilation of these parameters in the medical literature. Methods A narrative literature review of the published medical literature for facial measurements used for facial analysis in rhinoplasty was done through the electronic databases MEDLINE/PubMed and Google Scholar, along with a citation search. Results A total of 61 facial features were identified. 45 points (25 bilateral, 20 unilateral), five lines (three bilateral, two unilateral), eight planes, and three areas. A total of 122 measurements were identified: 48 distances (6 bilateral, 42 unilateral), 57 angles (13 bilateral, 44 unilateral), and 17 ratios. Supplemental Figures were created to depict all features and measurements using either a frontal, lateral or basal view of the face. Conclusions This paper provides the most comprehensive and current compilation of facial measurements to date. We believe this compilation will guide further developments (methodologies and software tools) for analyzing nasal structures and assessing the objective outcomes of facial surgeries, in particular rhinoplasty. Moreover, it will improve the communication as a reference for facial measurements of facial surface anthropometry, in particular rhinoplasty.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003329412110184
Author(s):  
Paola Surcinelli ◽  
Federica Andrei ◽  
Ornella Montebarocci ◽  
Silvana Grandi

Aim of the research The literature on emotion recognition from facial expressions shows significant differences in recognition ability depending on the proposed stimulus. Indeed, affective information is not distributed uniformly in the face and recent studies showed the importance of the mouth and the eye regions for a correct recognition. However, previous studies used mainly facial expressions presented frontally and studies which used facial expressions in profile view used a between-subjects design or children faces as stimuli. The present research aims to investigate differences in emotion recognition between faces presented in frontal and in profile views by using a within subjects experimental design. Method The sample comprised 132 Italian university students (88 female, Mage = 24.27 years, SD = 5.89). Face stimuli displayed both frontally and in profile were selected from the KDEF set. Two emotion-specific recognition accuracy scores, viz., frontal and in profile, were computed from the average of correct responses for each emotional expression. In addition, viewing times and response times (RT) were registered. Results Frontally presented facial expressions of fear, anger, and sadness were significantly better recognized than facial expressions of the same emotions in profile while no differences were found in the recognition of the other emotions. Longer viewing times were also found when faces expressing fear and anger were presented in profile. In the present study, an impairment in recognition accuracy was observed only for those emotions which rely mostly on the eye regions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Ruth Schmidt ◽  
Katelyn Stenger

Abstract Despite widespread recognition that behavioral public policy (BPP) needs to move beyond nudging if the field is to achieve more significant impact, problem-solving approaches remain optimized to achieve tactical success and are evaluated by short-term metrics with the assumption of stable systems. As a result, current methodologies may contribute to the development of solutions that appear well formed but become ‘brittle’ in the face of more complex contexts if they fail to consider important contextual cues, broader system forces, and emergent conditions, which can take three distinct forms: contextual, systemic, and anticipatory brittleness. The Covid-19 pandemic and vaccination rollout present an opportunity to identify and correct interventional brittleness with a new methodological approach – strategic BPP (SBPP) – that can inform the creation of more resilient solutions by embracing more diverse forms of evidence and applied foresight, designing interventions within ecosystems, and iteratively developing solutions. To advance the case for adopting a SBPP and ‘roughly right’ modes of inquiry, we use the Covid-19 vaccination rollout to define a new methodological roadmap, while also acknowledging that taking a more strategic approach may challenge current BPP norms.


Symmetry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongxue Liang ◽  
Kyoungju Park ◽  
Przemyslaw Krompiec

With the advent of the deep learning method, portrait video stylization has become more popular. In this paper, we present a robust method for automatically stylizing portrait videos that contain small human faces. By extending the Mask Regions with Convolutional Neural Network features (R-CNN) with a CNN branch which detects the contour landmarks of the face, we divided the input frame into three regions: the region of facial features, the region of the inner face surrounded by 36 face contour landmarks, and the region of the outer face. Besides keeping the facial features region as it is, we used two different stroke models to render the other two regions. During the non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) of the animation video, we combined the deformable strokes and optical flow estimation between adjacent frames to follow the underlying motion coherently. The experimental results demonstrated that our method could not only effectively reserve the small and distinct facial features, but also follow the underlying motion coherently.


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