Kuraguchi Kana, Kanari Kei
Faculty of Psychology, Otemon Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.
Department of Fundamental Engineering, Utsunomiya University, Tochigi, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2020 Sep 3;11:558478. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.558478. eCollection 2020.
The face inversion effect reflects the special nature of facial processing and appears not only in recognizing facial identity or expression but also in subjective evaluation, such as facial attractiveness. Previous studies have revealed that the way in which we perceive attractiveness (beauty versus cuteness) differs our perceptual behavior. Therefore, the face inversion effect on attractiveness might differ based on the viewpoint of attractiveness. In this study, we measured pupillary response when judging the cuteness of facial stimuli and focused on the mechanism of perceiving attractiveness in terms of the effect of involuntary physical reaction. We investigated whether perceived cuteness - a kind of attractiveness - was affected by face inversion and whether the face inversion effect appeared in pupillary responses. We then conducted experiments in which participants observed inverted faces and rated the subjective cuteness of the faces, and we measured the participants' pupil size while they observed the facial stimuli. The results revealed a negative correlation between pupil changes and the perceived cuteness of inverted faces, which is consistent with the previous result of upright faces. Thus, we found that the perception of facial cuteness is little affected by face inversion, suggesting that the judgment of cuteness is processed differently from other types of attractiveness such as beauty. We also found that pupillary response is related to perceiving cuteness, which could lead to consistency in the perception of cuteness.
面部倒置效应反映了面部加工的特殊性，不仅出现在识别面部身份或表情中，还出现在主观评价中，如面部吸引力。以往的研究表明，我们感知吸引力（美丽与可爱）的方式会影响我们的感知行为。因此，基于吸引力的观点，面部倒置对吸引力的影响可能会有所不同。在本研究中，我们在判断面部刺激的可爱程度时测量了瞳孔反应，并从非自愿身体反应的影响角度关注了感知吸引力的机制。我们研究了感知到的可爱程度（一种吸引力）是否受到面部倒置的影响，以及面部倒置效应是否出现在瞳孔反应中。然后，我们进行了实验，让参与者观察倒置的面部并对面部的主观可爱程度进行评分，同时在他们观察面部刺激时测量参与者的瞳孔大小。结果显示，瞳孔变化与倒置面部的感知可爱程度之间存在负相关，这与之前关于正立面部的结果一致。因此，我们发现面部可爱程度的感知受面部倒置的影响很小，这表明可爱程度的判断与其他类型的吸引力（如美丽）的处理方式不同。我们还发现瞳孔反应与感知可爱程度有关，这可能导致可爱程度感知的一致性。
