Facial diversity and infant preferences for attractive faces.

Three studies examined infant preferences for attractive faces in four types of faces: White adult male and female faces, Black adult female faces, and infant faces. Infants viewed pairs of faces, previously rated for attractiveness by adults, in a visual preference paradigm. Significant preferences were found for attractive faces across all facial types. The results confirm earlier reports of this phenomenon and extend those results by showing that infant preferences for attractive faces generalize across faces differing in race, gender, and age. Two potential explanations for these observed infant preferences are discussed. We recently reported several studies showing that young infants visually discriminate among adult female faces based on the adult-judged attractiveness of the faces and that infants exhibit both visual and behavioral preferences for attractive compared with unattractive female faces (Langlois et al., 1987; Langlois, Roggman, & Rieser-Danner, 1990). These results were surprising to many people because infants were not expected to be able to make such subtle discriminations. In addition,