Attractive Faces Are not all Created Equal: Joint Effects of Facial Babyishness and Attractiveness on Social Perception

Subjects provided their impressions of stimulus faces that systematically varied in attractiveness and babyishness. The results indicate that variations in facial babyishness can qualify the effects of attractiveness on social perception. For example facially attractive people are thought to be more honest, warm, and sincere than average when facial babyishness is high but not when it is low. The data are consistent with the proposal that there are different types of facial attractiveness that yield different impressions. The data also revealed that the effects of facial babyishness on impressions can be modulated by variations in attractiveness. The implications of these data for our under-standing of the effects of facial appearance on social perceptions are discussed.