Mayer Christine, Windhager Sonja, Schaefer Katrin, Mitteroecker Philipp
Department of Theoretical Biology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Department of Biosciences, CEES & EvoGene, University of Oslo, Blindern, Oslo, Norway.
PLoS One. 2017 Jan 4;12(1):e0169336. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169336. eCollection 2017.
Facial markers of body composition are frequently studied in evolutionary psychology and are important in computational and forensic face recognition. We assessed the association of body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) with facial shape and texture (color pattern) in a sample of young Middle European women by a combination of geometric morphometrics and image analysis. Faces of women with high BMI had a wider and rounder facial outline relative to the size of the eyes and lips, and relatively lower eyebrows. Furthermore, women with high BMI had a brighter and more reddish skin color than women with lower BMI. The same facial features were associated with WHR, even though BMI and WHR were only moderately correlated. Yet BMI was better predictable than WHR from facial attributes. After leave-one-out cross-validation, we were able to predict 25% of variation in BMI and 10% of variation in WHR by facial shape. Facial texture predicted only about 3-10% of variation in BMI and WHR. This indicates that facial shape primarily reflects total fat proportion, rather than the distribution of fat within the body. The association of reddish facial texture in high-BMI women may be mediated by increased blood pressure and superficial blood flow as well as diet. Our study elucidates how geometric morphometric image analysis serves to quantify the effect of biological factors such as BMI and WHR to facial shape and color, which in turn contributes to social perception.
身体成分的面部标志在进化心理学中经常被研究，并且在计算机和法医面部识别中很重要。我们通过几何形态计量学和图像分析相结合的方法，评估了中欧年轻女性样本中体重指数（BMI）和腰臀比（WHR）与面部形状和纹理（颜色模式）之间的关联。BMI高的女性面部轮廓相对于眼睛和嘴唇的大小更宽更圆，眉毛相对较低。此外，BMI高的女性比BMI低的女性肤色更亮且更红。即使BMI和WHR只是中度相关，相同的面部特征也与WHR有关。然而，从面部特征来看，BMI比WHR更易于预测。在留一法交叉验证后，我们能够通过面部形状预测BMI中25%的变异和WHR中10%的变异。面部纹理仅能预测BMI和WHR中约3 - 10%的变异。这表明面部形状主要反映的是总脂肪比例，而非体内脂肪的分布。BMI高的女性面部发红的纹理之间的关联可能是由血压升高、浅表血流增加以及饮食介导的。我们的研究阐明了几何形态计量图像分析如何用于量化诸如BMI和WHR等生物学因素对面部形状和颜色的影响，这反过来又有助于社会认知。
