School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
Br J Psychol. 2013 May;104(2):235-48. doi: 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02117.x. Epub 2012 Jun 6.
Although several prominent theories of human facial attractiveness propose that some facial characteristics convey information about people's health, empirical evidence for this claim is somewhat mixed. While most previous research into this issue has focused on facial characteristics such as symmetry, averageness, and sexual dimorphism, a recent study reported that ratings of facial adiposity (i.e., perceptions of fatness in the face) were positively correlated with indices of poor physical condition in a sample of young adults (i.e., reported past health problems and measures of cardiovascular fitness). These findings are noteworthy, since they suggest that perceived adiposity is a potentially important facial cue of health that has been overlooked by much of the previous work in this area. Here, we show that ratings of young adult women's facial adiposity are (1) better predicted by their body weight than by their body shape (Studies 1 and 2), (2) correlated with a composite measure of their physical and psychological condition (Study 2), and (3) negatively correlated with their trait (i.e., average) salivary progesterone levels (Study 3). Together, these findings present further evidence that perceived facial adiposity, or a correlate thereof, conveys potentially important information about women's actual health.
虽然一些关于人类面部吸引力的重要理论提出，某些面部特征可以传递有关人们健康状况的信息，但这一说法的经验证据有些混杂。虽然之前关于这个问题的大多数研究都集中在面部特征上，例如对称性、平均性和性别二态性，但最近的一项研究报告称，在年轻人样本中，面部肥胖程度（即对面部肥胖的感知）的评分与身体健康状况的指标呈正相关，这些指标包括过去报告的健康问题和心血管健康状况的衡量标准。这些发现值得注意，因为它们表明，感知到的肥胖程度是身体健康的一个潜在重要面部线索，而这在该领域的大部分先前研究中都被忽视了。在这里，我们表明，年轻女性面部肥胖程度的评分（1）比她们的体型更能被她们的体重预测（研究 1 和 2），（2）与她们身体和心理状况的综合衡量标准相关（研究 2），（3）与她们的特质（即平均）唾液孕激素水平呈负相关（研究 3）。这些发现共同提供了进一步的证据，表明感知到的面部肥胖程度或与之相关的特征，传递了有关女性实际健康状况的潜在重要信息。
