Attractive faces are rewarding irrespective of face category: Motivation in viewing attractive faces in Japanese viewers

Attractive faces have reward value for beholders, and thus people are motivated to view them. The incentive salience of attractive faces has been measured by using a pay-per-view key-pressing paradigm, wherein participants change the viewing time of a presented face image. For example, it was reported that male and female viewers were motivated to view attractive opposite-sex faces and cute infant faces longer than less attractive/cute faces. However, sex differences in the motivation to view attractive adult and cute infant faces were equivocal. We replicated previous observations from Caucasian populations that attractive faces are viewed longer than less attractive faces in a pay-per-view task in East-Asian populations. Results revealed that our male and female Japanese participants both made efforts to view attractive/cute faces irrespective of face category.

I. Introduction

Facial attractiveness provokes emotion and actions that help increase the probability of survival of our genes [1]. From the evolutionary psychological point of view, facial attractiveness is a prominent sign of high genetic quality, fecundity, and health [2], and therefore people are sensitive to facial cues regarding attractiveness, yielding advantages in reproduction [3], [4]. As such, our attention system also seems biased toward attractive faces [5], [6].