Watkins Christopher D, Nicholls Mike J, Batres Carlota, Xiao Dengke, Talamas Sean, Perrett David I
Division of Psychology, School of Social and Health Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland DD1 1HG, United Kingdom.
Division of Psychology, School of Social and Health Sciences, Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland DD1 1HG, United Kingdom.
Cognition. 2017 Jun;163:146-154. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.03.007. Epub 2017 Mar 22.
Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory when individuals are in a committed romantic relationship, romantic relationship quality can vary over time. In light of this, we tested whether activating concerns about romantic relationship quality strengthens memory for attractive faces. Partnered women were exposed briefly to faces manipulated in shape cues to attractiveness before either being asked to think about a moment of emotional closeness or distance in their current relationship. We measured sensitivity in memory for faces as the extent to which they recognized correct versions of studied faces over versions of the same person altered to look either more or less-attractive than their original (i.e., studied) version. Contrary to predictions, high relationship quality strengthened hit rate for faces regardless of the sex or attractiveness of the face. In general, women's memories were more sensitive to attractiveness in women, but were biased toward attractiveness in male faces, both when responding to unfamiliar faces and versions of familiar faces that were more attractive than the original male identity from the learning phase. However, findings varied according to self-rated attractiveness and a psychometric measure of the quality of their current relationship. Attractive women were more sensitive to attractiveness in men, while their less-attractive peers had a stronger bias to remember women as more-attractive and men as less-attractive than their original image respectively. Women in better-quality romantic relationships had stronger positive biases toward, and false memories for, attractive men. Our findings suggest a sophisticated pattern of sensitivity and bias in women's memory for facial cues to quality that varies systematically according to factors that may alter the costs of female mating competition ('market demand') and relationship maintenance.
尽管最近的研究表明，当个体处于稳定的浪漫关系中时，异性面部吸引力在记忆中不那么突出，但浪漫关系的质量会随时间变化。鉴于此，我们测试了激活对浪漫关系质量的担忧是否会增强对有吸引力面孔的记忆。有伴侣的女性在被要求思考她们当前关系中的情感亲密或疏远时刻之前，会短暂地接触到在形状线索上被操纵以增加吸引力的面孔。我们将对面孔记忆的敏感度衡量为，与同一人的原始（即研究过的）版本相比，她们识别出经过改变以看起来更有吸引力或更没吸引力的面孔版本中正确面孔版本的程度。与预测相反，高关系质量增强了对面孔的命中率，无论面孔的性别或吸引力如何。总体而言，女性的记忆对女性面孔的吸引力更敏感，但在回应不熟悉的面孔以及比学习阶段原始男性身份更有吸引力的熟悉面孔版本时，对男性面孔的吸引力存在偏向。然而，研究结果因自我评定的吸引力以及她们当前关系质量的心理测量指标而异。有吸引力的女性对男性面孔的吸引力更敏感，而她们不太有吸引力的同龄人则分别更倾向于将女性记忆为比原始形象更有吸引力，将男性记忆为比原始形象更没吸引力。处于质量更好的浪漫关系中的女性对有吸引力的男性有更强的积极偏向和错误记忆。我们的研究结果表明，女性对面部质量线索的记忆存在一种复杂的敏感度和偏向模式，这种模式会根据可能改变女性交配竞争成本（“市场需求”）和关系维持的因素而系统地变化。
