Department of Sociobiology/Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
Int J Cosmet Sci. 2011 Apr;33(2):126-31. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2494.2010.00594.x. Epub 2010 Aug 30.
Perception of age and health is critical in the judgement of attractiveness. The few studies conducted on the significance of apparent skin condition on human physical appearance have studied faces alone or isolated fields of images facial skin. Little is known about whether perception of the face matches that of other body parts or if body skin affects overall age and attractiveness perception when presented in combination with facial skin. We hypothesized that independent presentation of female faces, chests and arms (including hands) - cropped from a full face and upper body image - would result in significant differences in perception of age and attractiveness compared to the corresponding composite. Furthermore, we sought to investigate whether relatively young and attractive looking skin on selected, individual parts of the body affects overall perception. Digital photographs of 52 women aged 45-65 years were collected and processed to yield four derivative sets of images: One set showed the composite of all features, i.e. the face, the chest and the arms, whereas the other three were cropped carefully to show each part of the upper body described above independently. A total of 240 participants judged these faces for perceived age and attractiveness. Our results showed significant differences in perception with the chest and the arms being judged significantly younger than the face or composite image of the same women. Moreover, arms and chest images were perceived as more attractive than face and composite images. Finally, regression analysis indicated that differences between the perceived and chronological values of overall age perception could be predicted by age perception of the face and arms. These results continue to support the significance of facial age perception in assessment of a woman's age, but highlight that body skin also plays a role in overall age impression.
年龄和健康感知在吸引力评判中至关重要。少数关于明显皮肤状况对人体外貌重要性的研究仅对面部或孤立的面部皮肤图像领域进行了研究。对于面部与其他身体部位的感知是否匹配，或者当面部皮肤与身体皮肤组合呈现时，身体皮肤是否会影响整体年龄和吸引力感知，人们知之甚少。我们假设，单独呈现女性的面部、胸部和手臂（包括手）——从完整的面部和上半身图像中裁剪出来——与相应的组合相比，在年龄和吸引力感知上会产生显著差异。此外，我们试图调查身体特定部位相对年轻和有吸引力的皮肤是否会影响整体感知。收集了 52 名年龄在 45-65 岁的女性的数字照片，并进行处理以生成四组衍生图像：一组显示所有特征的组合，即面部、胸部和手臂，而另外三组则仔细裁剪以独立显示上述上半身的每个部分。共有 240 名参与者对这些面部进行了年龄和吸引力的感知判断。我们的研究结果表明，感知存在显著差异，胸部和手臂被判断比面部或相同女性的组合图像年轻很多。此外，手臂和胸部的图像比面部和组合图像更具吸引力。最后，回归分析表明，整体年龄感知的感知差异与面部和手臂的年龄感知之间存在差异，可以预测整体年龄感知的差异。这些结果继续支持面部年龄感知在评估女性年龄中的重要性，但也强调了身体皮肤在整体年龄印象中也起着重要作用。
