Sozialpsychologie I, Department Psychologie, Universität zu Köln, Richard-Strauss-Str. 2, 50931 Köln, Germany.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2014 May;9(5):681-8. doi: 10.1093/scan/nst026. Epub 2013 Mar 18.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. How attractive someone is perceived to be depends on the individual or cultural standards to which this person is compared. But although comparisons play a central role in the way people judge the appearance of others, the brain processes underlying attractiveness comparisons remain unknown. In the present experiment, we tested the hypothesis that attractiveness comparisons rely on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms as comparisons of simple nonsocial magnitudes such as size. We recorded brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants compared the beauty or height of two women or two dogs. Our data support the hypothesis of a common process underlying these different types of comparisons. First, we demonstrate that the distance effect characteristic of nonsocial comparisons also holds for attractiveness comparisons. Behavioral results indicated, for all our comparisons, longer response times for near than far distances. Second, the neural correlates of these distance effects overlapped in a frontoparietal network known for its involvement in processing simple nonsocial quantities. These results provide evidence for overlapping processes in the comparison of physical attractiveness and nonsocial magnitudes.
美在意料之中。一个人被认为有多吸引人取决于这个人与之相比的个体或文化标准。但是，尽管比较在人们判断他人外貌的方式中起着核心作用，但潜在的吸引力比较的大脑处理过程仍然未知。在本实验中，我们检验了这样一个假设，即吸引力比较依赖于与大小等简单非社交量的比较相同的认知和神经机制。我们在参与者比较两名女性或两只狗的美貌或身高时，用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）记录了大脑活动。我们的数据支持了这些不同类型的比较存在共同过程的假设。首先，我们证明了非社交比较的特征性距离效应也适用于吸引力比较。行为结果表明，在我们所有的比较中，近距离的反应时间都比远距离的长。其次，这些距离效应的神经相关物在一个已知涉及处理简单非社交数量的额顶网络中重叠。这些结果为物理吸引力和非社会数量的比较中存在重叠过程提供了证据。
