Memory for Faces: Gender Differences and the Effect of Attractiveness and Aggressiveness

Several studies have demonstrated that women outperform men in face recognition memory tasks however the reason for this is unclear. Potential reasons include gender differences in response bias and women’s own-gender bias. Participants completed an incidental memory task where they were instructed to rate either the attractiveness or aggressiveness of presented faces. The results indicated that women and men do not significantly differ in response bias and the own-gender bias was only observed in the aggressiveness-rating condition. Thus, depending on the encoding instructions, the own-gender bias may explain women’s advantage for face memory. Additionally, facial characteristics can impact face recognition accuracy. This study explores the effect attractiveness/aggressiveness has on hit rate (number of correct recognitions). A main effect of attractiveness-rating was observed, and this may be due to the averageness and typicality of attractive faces which may make them easier to remember. Furthermore, the impact of highly attractive and highly aggressive faces on hit rate was tested. Contrary to what was hypothesised, highly attractive faces elicited a significantly higher hit rate than highly aggressive faces. This finding has practical applications for eyewitness testimony as it can inform what faces should be used as fillers in a police lineup.