ABSTRACT Facial skin color significantly influences social perceptions (e.g., attractiveness and health) within cultural contexts. This study investigates how variations in facial skin color within CIELAB space impact impression formation among Chinese observers evaluating East Asian faces. Two psychophysical experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, involved 30 Chinese participants rated 35 facial images with varying skin colors using 24 bipolar adjective pairs based on semantic differential scales. Principal component analysis revealed three perceptual dimensions—attractiveness, masculinity, and naturalness—which together accounted for 93.63% of the cumulative variance. Experiment 2 employed 24 participants to evaluate 505 systematically generated facial stimuli via a 7‐point Likert scale. Results revealed distinct gender‐specific preferences: male attractiveness was associated with a higher chroma, while female attractiveness correlated with softer, less saturated tones. Masculinity was consistently linked to higher chroma. Based on these findings, gender‐specific ellipsoidal models were fitted in CIELAB space to quantify ideal skin color centers and perceptual tolerances. These models demonstrated high predictive accuracy and robustness, underscoring the role of gender as a critical factor in skin color perception. This work enhances predictive modeling in social psychology and offers practical applications in cosmetic development and computer vision, such as photorealistic face rendering.
He et al. (2026) studied this question.