Older faces are rated as less attractive than younger faces; older perceivers are less influenced by the age of the viewed face; men distinguish more clearly between faces when judging attractiveness, especially in female faces

The effect of aging on facial attractiveness: An empirical and computational investigation. Dexian He et al. Acta Psychologica, Volume 219, September 2021, 103385. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103385

Highlights

• Older faces are rated as less attractive than younger faces and treated like a category when making aesthetic judgments.

• Older perceivers are less influenced by the age of the viewed face than younger and middle-aged perceivers.

• Men, more than women, distinguish more clearly between faces when judging attractiveness, especially in female faces.

• Aging has less of an effect on judgments of elegance than beauty and gorgeousness.

Abstract: How does aging affect facial attractiveness? We tested the hypothesis that people find older faces less attractive than younger faces, and furthermore, that these aging effects are modulated by the age and sex of the perceiver and by the specific kind of attractiveness judgment being made. Using empirical and computational network science methods, we confirmed that with increasing age, faces are perceived as less attractive. This effect was less pronounced in judgments made by older than younger and middle-aged perceivers, and more pronounced by men (especially for female faces) than women. Attractive older faces were perceived as elegant more than beautiful or gorgeous. Furthermore, network analyses revealed that older faces were more similar in attractiveness and were segregated from younger faces. These results indicate that perceivers tend to process older faces categorically when making attractiveness judgments. Attractiveness is not a monolithic construct. It varies by age, sex, and the dimensions of attractiveness being judged.

Keywords: Face perceptionAgeSexAttractivenessNetwork science

4. Discussion

The present study used empirical and computational network science methods to investigate the effect of aging on attractiveness and to examine how this effect is modulated by the perceiver's age, sex, and dimensions used to make attractiveness judgments. Using highly controlled stimuli, and replicating earlier observations, we found that older faces were perceived as less beautiful, elegant, and gorgeous, and they were liked less. Further, young people rated young faces as more attractive than did older perceivers. Older female faces received lower ratings from male perceivers than female perceivers, suggesting that the age of faces influenced men's ratings for attractiveness more robustly than it does for women making ratings; Finally, beauty, elegance, and gorgeousness ratings were affected differently by age. While the ratings for all these attractiveness descriptors diminished with age, elegance was affected least.

We also observed a relative categorical perception of older faces in that they were viewed more similarly to each other (i.e., they clustered closer together) than the other two groups of faces in face preference networks, which could make it easier for older faces to be subject to negative stereotyping. Alternatively, it's also possible that negative biases towards older individuals make people less inclined to distinguish them. Consistent with these interpretations, older faces were more segregated from and located further away from younger faces compared to middle-aged faces in the networks, again suggesting older faces were more distinct from younger faces in facial beauty.

Perceivers showed negative biases towards older faces, rating them as less beautiful, gorgeous, elegant, and liked. Face preferences are regarded as adaptations for mate choice since attractive traits signal mate quality (Grammer et al., 2003; Rhodes, 2006). The human brain may have evolved to favor these traits (Chatterjee, Thomas, Smith, & Aguirre, 2009; Rellecke et al., 2011). Thus, an evolutionary mechanism might enhance perceptual sensitivity towards younger faces. Alternatively, younger people may simply have less exposure to and experience with older faces. Faces of one's own age group are better recognized and remembered than faces of another age group (own-age bias, OAB; Bartlett & Leslie, 1986; Ebner et al., 2013). Either way, older faces were judged as less distinct from each other and treated more categorically when making attractiveness judgments.

Despite commonalities, the structural properties of the networks varied across perceiver age, sex, and dimension of attractiveness. Faces in the older perceivers face preference network were more segregated than those of younger perceivers. As perceiver age increased, older faces were seen as more distinct in attractiveness. These dynamic changes may reflect that our face preferences are updated by experiences and exposures to faces across the lifespan.

Considerable research has demonstrated that environmental factors, including cumulative environmental exposure and different environments, contribute to age differences in human cognition (Siew et al., 2019; Wulff, De Deyne, Aeschbach, & Mata, 2021; Wulff, De Deyne, Jones, & Mata, 2019). Individuals continue to learn as they get older. Older people are assumed to have acquired more knowledge (e.g., broader vocabulary) than younger people, which subsequently leads to the concepts becoming more distant and further apart from each other in their mental representation (Cosgrove et al., 2021; Wulff, De Deyne, Aeschbach, & Mata, 2021). This may account for the pattern observed in the older adults' semantic network and the similar segregated effect in face preference networks. Research on face preferences also emphasizes the substantial role of experience/environmental factors in shaping our notions of attractiveness (Germine et al., 2015). The cumulative exposure to faces has important implications for individual face preferences. Older people have been generally exposed to more faces and have more diverse experiences compared to younger and middle-aged perceivers. Regarding different environments, people interact more with peers in daily life. These cohort effects may contribute to older viewers being less influenced by the age of the viewed face and more discriminating with older faces in attractiveness. Taken together, we propose that differences in face experience may account for the age-related changes in perception of attractiveness that we report. Older people's experiences and preferences cover a greater span of time.

Men, more than women, segregated faces into clusters by age and sex. The homophily analysis also showed that men more than women were likely to associate same sex faces together. Finally, men viewed faces from different ages and sexes as more organized and more segregated, suggesting they make more distinctions between faces when judging facial beauty. These observations confirm the hypothesis that men are more sensitive to features of physical attractiveness than women, they are more likely to treat face attractiveness categorically, and their sensitivity is further pronounced when judging women's faces.

Sex-specific mating strategies might be reflected in these perceptions of facial attractiveness. Men tend to prioritize women's physical attractiveness, healthiness, and youth, which are theorized to ultimately increase reproductive success and off-spring quality. In contrast, women are thought to value men's status and resources more than attractiveness (Li & Kenrick, 2006; Rhodes, 2006). Empirical data also corroborate that these mate preferences translate into actual mating behavior (Conroy-Beam & Buss, 2018; see also Buss & Schmitt, 2018). Such sex differences in preferences for physical appearance are likely important drivers of differences in perceptions of attractiveness between men and women. However, these strategies are confined to theorizing about heterosexual mating contexts. We do not know if these results would generalize to non-heterosexual individuals.

Finally, there was a stronger association of the dimension of elegance with older than younger and middle-aged faces, and with female than male faces. Elegance, as a descriptor of attractiveness, seems to alert people to finer distinctions in attractiveness for older than younger faces. The overall decrease in attractiveness judgments by age is muted for elegance compared to beauty or gorgeousness is consistent with the view that the notion of elegance goes beyond physical attractiveness, and signals non-physical properties (Menninghaus et al., 2019). We speculate that elegance incorporates cultural norms of attractiveness that are not tethered to physical features as tightly as for beauty and gorgeousness.

We extend previous findings for aging effects to different aspects of attractiveness and revealed differences in the processes people use when judging attractiveness of older faces. However, our study has a few limitations. Different effect sizes were observed for the three network measures in face preferences networks. This probably indicates that one data source is better than the other for these psychometric networks. Future studies are needed to replicate and strengthen our findings. In addition, age-related differences may result from generational or/and developmental differences. We suggest that face preference is influenced by face experiences across the lifespan. But it is hard to quantitatively measure individual difference in face experiences. Whether our findings are the effect of specific generational cohorts or actual aging and accumulation of experience is difficult to determine. Our study was also conducted in the US. American culture may disproportionately value youth. Perhaps these aging effects would be mitigated in cultures with different attitudes towards the elderly.