Muñoz Francisco, Martín-Loeches Manuel
Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, UCM-ISCIII, Spain.
Brain Res. 2015 Jan 12;1594:154-64. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2014.10.061. Epub 2014 Nov 4.
This experiment investigated how the esthetic judgment of human body and face modulates cognitive and affective processes. We hypothesized that judgments on ugliness and beauty would elicit separable event-related brain potentials (ERP) patterns, depending on the esthetic value of body and faces in both genders. In a pretest session, participants evaluated images in a range from very ugly to very beautiful, what generated three sets of beautiful, ugly and neutral faces and bodies. In the recording session, they performed a task consisting in a beautiful-neutral-ugly judgment. Cognitive and affective effects were observed on a differential pattern of ERP components (P200, P300 and LPC). Main findings revealed a P200 amplitude increase to ugly images, probably the result of a negativity bias in attentional processes. A P300 increase was found mostly to beautiful images, particularly to female bodies, consistent with the salience of these stimuli, particularly for stimulus categorization. LPC appeared significantly larger to both ugly and beautiful images, probably reflecting later, decision processes linked to keeping information in working memory. This finding was especially remarkable for ugly male faces. Our findings are discussed on the ground of evolutionary and adaptive value of esthetics in person evaluation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Hold Item.
本实验研究了人体和面部的审美判断如何调节认知和情感过程。我们假设,根据男女身体和面部的审美价值,对丑陋和美丽的判断会引发可分离的事件相关脑电位(ERP)模式。在预测试阶段,参与者对从非常丑陋到非常美丽的图像进行评估,这产生了三组美丽、丑陋和中性的面孔及身体。在记录阶段,他们执行了一项包含美丽-中性-丑陋判断的任务。在ERP成分(P200、P300和LPC)的差异模式上观察到了认知和情感效应。主要发现显示,丑陋图像的P200振幅增加,这可能是注意力过程中负性偏差的结果。P300增加主要出现在美丽图像上,尤其是女性身体,这与这些刺激的显著性一致,特别是对于刺激分类。LPC在丑陋和美丽图像上均显著增大,这可能反映了与将信息保留在工作记忆中相关的后期决策过程。这一发现对于丑陋的男性面孔尤为显著。我们基于美学在人物评价中的进化和适应价值对这些发现进行了讨论。本文是名为《持有项目》的特刊的一部分。