Gonzalez-Santoyo Isaac, Wheatley John R, Welling Lisa L M, Cárdenas Rodrigo A, Jimenez-Trejo Francisco, Dawood Khytam, Puts David A
Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Horm Behav. 2015 May;71:16-21. doi: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2015.03.006. Epub 2015 Apr 7.
The human face displays a wealth of information, including information about dominance and fecundity. Dominance and fecundity are also associated with lower concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, suggesting that cortisol may negatively predict facial dominance and attractiveness. We digitally photographed 61 women's faces, had these images rated by men and women for dominance, attractiveness, and femininity, and explored relationships between these perceptions and women's salivary cortisol concentrations. In a first study, we found that women with more dominant-appearing, but not more attractive, faces had lower cortisol levels. These associations were not due to age, ethnicity, time since waking, testosterone, or its interaction with cortisol. In a second study, composite images of women with low cortisol were perceived as more dominant than those of women with high cortisol significantly more often than chance by two samples of viewers, with a similar but non-significant trend in a third sample. However, data on perceptions of attractiveness were mixed; low-cortisol images were viewed as more attractive by two samples of US viewers and as less attractive by a sample of Mexican viewers. Our results suggest that having a more dominant-appearing face may be associated with lower stress and hence lower cortisol in women, and provide further evidence regarding the information content of the human face.
人类的面部展现出丰富的信息，包括有关支配地位和生育能力的信息。支配地位和生育能力还与应激激素皮质醇的较低浓度相关，这表明皮质醇可能对面部的支配地位和吸引力具有负面预测作用。我们对61名女性的面部进行了数码拍照，让男性和女性对这些图像的支配地位、吸引力和女性气质进行评分，并探究这些认知与女性唾液皮质醇浓度之间的关系。在第一项研究中，我们发现面部看起来更具支配性而非更具吸引力的女性，其皮质醇水平较低。这些关联并非由于年龄、种族、醒后时间、睾酮或其与皮质醇的相互作用。在第二项研究中，低皮质醇女性的合成图像被两组观众显著更频繁地感知为比高皮质醇女性的合成图像更具支配性，第三组样本也有类似但不显著的趋势。然而，关于吸引力认知的数据参差不齐；两组美国观众认为低皮质醇图像更具吸引力，而一组墨西哥观众则认为其吸引力较低。我们的研究结果表明，面部看起来更具支配性可能与女性较低的压力以及由此产生的较低皮质醇有关，并为人脸的信息内容提供了进一步的证据。
