IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0099629.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cross-Cultural Agreement in Facial Attractiveness Preferences: The Role of Ethnicity and Gender

Author

Listed:
  • Vinet Coetzee
  • Jaco M Greeff
  • Ian D Stephen
  • David I Perrett

Abstract

Previous work showed high agreement in facial attractiveness preferences within and across cultures. The aims of the current study were twofold. First, we tested cross-cultural agreement in the attractiveness judgements of White Scottish and Black South African students for own- and other-ethnicity faces. Results showed significant agreement between White Scottish and Black South African observers' attractiveness judgements, providing further evidence of strong cross-cultural agreement in facial attractiveness preferences. Second, we tested whether cross-cultural agreement is influenced by the ethnicity and/or the gender of the target group. White Scottish and Black South African observers showed significantly higher agreement for Scottish than for African faces, presumably because both groups are familiar with White European facial features, but the Scottish group are less familiar with Black African facial features. Further work investigating this discordance in cross-cultural attractiveness preferences for African faces show that Black South African observers rely more heavily on colour cues when judging African female faces for attractiveness, while White Scottish observers rely more heavily on shape cues. Results also show higher cross-cultural agreement for female, compared to male faces, albeit not significantly higher. The findings shed new light on the factors that influence cross-cultural agreement in attractiveness preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Vinet Coetzee & Jaco M Greeff & Ian D Stephen & David I Perrett, 2014. "Cross-Cultural Agreement in Facial Attractiveness Preferences: The Role of Ethnicity and Gender," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(7), pages 1-8, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0099629
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0099629
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099629
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099629&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0099629?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Isabel M L Scott & Nicholas Pound & Ian D Stephen & Andrew P Clark & Ian S Penton-Voak, 2010. "Does Masculinity Matter? The Contribution of Masculine Face Shape to Male Attractiveness in Humans," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(10), pages 1-10, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alex L Jones & Robin S S Kramer, 2016. "Facial Cosmetics and Attractiveness: Comparing the Effect Sizes of Professionally-Applied Cosmetics and Identity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-17, October.
    2. Rainer Voegeli & Rotraut Schoop & Elodie Prestat-Marquis & Anthony V Rawlings & Todd K Shackelford & Bernhard Fink, 2021. "Cross-cultural perception of female facial appearance: A multi-ethnic and multi-centre study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-18, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Karin Wolffhechel & Amanda C Hahn & Hanne Jarmer & Claire I Fisher & Benedict C Jones & Lisa M DeBruine, 2015. "Testing the Utility of a Data-Driven Approach for Assessing BMI from Face Images," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(10), pages 1-10, October.
    2. Daniel E Re & David W Hunter & Vinet Coetzee & Bernard P Tiddeman & Dengke Xiao & Lisa M DeBruine & Benedict C Jones & David I Perrett, 2013. "Looking Like a Leader–Facial Shape Predicts Perceived Height and Leadership Ability," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(12), pages 1-10, December.
    3. José Antonio Muñoz-Reyes & Marta Iglesias-Julios & Miguel Pita & Enrique Turiegano, 2015. "Facial Features: What Women Perceive as Attractive and What Men Consider Attractive," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    4. Santiago Sanchez-Pages & Claudia Rodriguez-Ruiz & Enrique Turiegano, 2014. "Facial Masculinity: How the Choice of Measurement Method Enables to Detect Its Influence on Behaviour," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(11), pages 1-10, November.
    5. Barnaby JW Dixson & Anthony C Little & Henry GW Dixson & Robert C Brooks, 2017. "Do prevailing environmental factors influence human preferences for facial morphology?," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 28(5), pages 1217-1227.
    6. Philipp Mitteroecker & Sonja Windhager & Gerd B Müller & Katrin Schaefer, 2015. "The Morphometrics of “Masculinity” in Human Faces," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-13, February.
    7. Weiqing Zhang & Amanda C Hahn & Ziyi Cai & Anthony J Lee & Iris J Holzleitner & Lisa M DeBruine & Benedict C Jones, 2018. "No evidence that facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is associated with women's sexual desire," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-7, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0099629. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.