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Preference for attractive faces in human infants extends beyond conspecifics

Paul C Quinn1, David J Kelly, Kang Lee

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, USA.

Developmental Science
|January 4, 2008
PubMed

Insights

Human infants prefer attractive faces, and this preference extends to non-human animals like cats. This suggests general processing mechanisms, not just mate choice adaptations, influence infant face perception.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Comparative Cognition
  • Evolutionary Psychology

Background:

  • Human infants exhibit an early preference for attractive human faces.
  • The specificity of this preference (human-specific vs. general) remains an open question.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether infant preference for attractive faces is limited to human faces.
  • To explore the underlying mechanisms driving infant face attractiveness preferences.

Main Methods:

  • Presenting 3- to 4-month-old infants with attractive and unattractive domestic and wild cat (tiger) faces.
  • Utilizing inverted faces to control for low-level image differences.
  • Assessing the influence of attractiveness preference on recognition memory.

Main Results:

  • Infants showed a preference for attractive over unattractive cat faces.
  • This preference was absent for inverted faces, ruling out low-level image artifacts.
  • Attractiveness preference impacted subsequent face recognition memory.

Conclusions:

  • Infant preference for attractive faces is not human-specific.
  • General perceptual mechanisms, rather than mate choice adaptations, likely underlie these preferences.
  • Early-developing face processing mechanisms may be broadly tuned.

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