The Geneva Faces and Voices (GEFAV) database

Although many facial and vocal databases are available for research, very few of them have controlled the range of attractiveness of the stimuli that they offer. To fill this gap, we created the GEneva Faces and Voices (GEFAV) database, providing standardized faces (static and dynamic neutral, smiling) and voices (speaking sentences, vowels) of young European adults. A total of 61 women and 50 men 18-35 years old agreed to be part of the GEFAV stimuli, and two rating studies involving 285 participants provided evaluations of the facial and vocal samples. The final set of stimuli was satisfactory in terms of attractiveness range (wide and rather symmetrical distribution over the attractiveness continuum) and the reliability of the ratings (high consistency between the two rating studies, high interrater agreement in the final rating study). Moreover, the database showed an adequate validity, since a series of findings described by earlier research on human attractiveness were confirmed-namely, that facial and vocal attractiveness are predicted by femininity and health in women, and by masculinity, dominance, and trustworthiness in men. In future studies, the GEFAV stimuli may be used intact or transformed, individually or in multimodal combinations, to investigate a wide range of mechanisms, such as the behavioral, neuropsychological, and neurophysiological processes involved in social cognition.