Zhu Lan, Zhou Huan, Wang Xiaogang, Ma Xiao, Liu Qiaolan
West China School of Public Health and West China Fourth Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
School of Education and Psychology, Southwest Minzu University, Chengdu, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Nov 2;13:1024197. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1024197. eCollection 2022.
Dissatisfaction with facial appearance is one of the strongest contributors to body image disturbance among young Chinese females and leads to a series of psychological and behavioral disorders. By conducting behavioral and ERP experiments, this study illustrates how young females in China with facial dissatisfaction process different levels of facial attractiveness. Experiments 1 and 2 are behavioral experiments in which the dot-probe paradigm was used to explore the participant's attentional bias to facial attractiveness. The results showed that regardless of whether the face image was presented above or below the threshold, young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited attentional orientation toward lowly attractive faces and attentional avoidance to both lowly and highly attractive faces, while the control group showed difficulty in attentional disengagement from highly attractive faces. In experiment 3, the learning-recognition task was used to examine mnemonic bias toward facial attractiveness among females with facial dissatisfaction, and EEG data were also recorded during the encoding and retrieval phases. The study found that young females with facial dissatisfaction exhibited a mnemonic preference for lowly attractive images at both the encoding and retrieving stages, with higher P1, N170, P2, and N300 induced by lowly attractive faces, while the control group preferred highly attractive faces. In conclusion, young females with facial dissatisfaction tend to exhibit attentional orientation and mnemonic bias toward lowly attractive faces.
对面部外观的不满是导致中国年轻女性身体意象障碍的最主要因素之一，并会引发一系列心理和行为障碍。通过进行行为学和事件相关电位（ERP）实验，本研究阐明了中国面部不满的年轻女性如何处理不同水平的面部吸引力。实验1和实验2是行为学实验，采用点探测范式来探究参与者对面部吸引力的注意偏向。结果表明，无论面部图像是在阈上还是阈下呈现，面部不满的年轻女性对低吸引力面孔表现出注意定向，对低吸引力和高吸引力面孔均表现出注意回避，而对照组则难以从高吸引力面孔上脱离注意。在实验3中，采用学习-识别任务来检测面部不满女性对面部吸引力的记忆偏向，并且在编码和检索阶段记录脑电图（EEG）数据。研究发现，面部不满的年轻女性在编码和检索阶段均对低吸引力图像表现出记忆偏好，低吸引力面孔诱发更高的P1、N170、P2和N300，而对照组则偏好高吸引力面孔。总之，面部不满的年轻女性倾向于对低吸引力面孔表现出注意定向和记忆偏向。
