Lange, Jens, Birk Hagemeyer, Thomas Lösch, and Katrin Rentzsch. 2019. “Accuracy and Bias in the Social Perception of Envy.” OSF Preprints. June 16. doi:10.31219/osf.io/8jc7x
Abstract: Research converges on the notion that when people feel envy, they disguise it towards others. This implies that a person’s envy in a given situation cannot be accurately perceived by peers, as envy lacks a specific display that could be used as a perceptual cue. In contrast to this reasoning, research supports that envy contributes to the regulation of status hierarchies. If envy threatens status positions, people should be highly attentive to identify enviers. The combination of the two led us to expect that (a) state envy is difficult to accurately perceive in unacquainted persons and (b) dispositional enviers can be accurately identified by acquaintances. To investigate these hypotheses, we used actor-partner interdependence models to disentangle accuracy and bias in the perception of state and trait envy. In Study 1, 436 unacquainted dyad members competed against each other and rated their own and the partner’s state envy. Perception bias was significantly positive, yet perception accuracy was non-significant. In Study 2, 502 acquainted dyad members rated their own and the partner’s dispositional benign and malicious envy as well as trait authentic and hubristic pride. Accuracy coefficients were positive for dispositional benign and malicious envy and robust when controlling for trait authentic and hubristic pride. Moreover, accuracy for dispositional benign envy increased with the depth of the relationship. We conclude that enviers might be identifiable but only after extended contact and discuss how this contributes to research on the ambiguous experience of being envied.
Posttraumatic stress and psychological health following infidelity in unmarried young adults. Lydia G. Roos et al. Stress and Health, June 14 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2880
Abstract: Infidelity is often conceptualized as a traumatic event; however, little research has explored this topic empirically, particularly in unmarried adults. We determined the prevalence of infidelity‐related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among unmarried adults who experienced a partner's infidelity and whether probable infidelity‐related PTSD was associated with additional psychological health outcomes (i.e., depressive symptoms, perceived stress, anxiety symptoms). We also investigated whether negative posttraumatic cognitions mediated the associations between infidelity‐related PTSD symptoms and psychological health. This study included 73 adults (M age = 19.42, SE = 0.19 years) who experienced infidelity within a committed nonmarital relationship within the last five years. Controlling for gender, race, and exposure to DSM Criterion A traumas, 45.2% of our sample reported symptoms suggesting probable infidelity‐related PTSD. Whether used as continuous or categorical predictor, infidelity‐related PTSD symptoms were significantly associated with depressive symptoms, although results for perceived stress and anxiety symptoms were mixed. Posttraumatic cognitions acted as a partial mediator for depressive symptoms, and full mediator for perceived stress and anxiety symptoms. This empirical evidence suggests infidelity may produce PTSD symptoms at a relatively high rate, even in unmarried young adults, and may put individuals at risk for poorer psychological health, partially through posttraumatic cognitions.
The Madonna-Whore Dichotomy Is Associated With Patriarchy Endorsement: Evidence From Israel, the United States, and Germany. Rotem Kahalon et al. Psychology of Women Quarterly, May 2, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684319843298
Abstract: The madonna-whore dichotomy denotes polarized perceptions of women as either good and chaste or as bad and promiscuous. In the present research, we examined the correlates of madonna-whore dichotomy among samples of heterosexual Israeli, U.S., and German women and heterosexual U.S. and German men. Demonstrating cross-cultural generalizability, madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement correlated with endorsement of patriarchy-supporting ideologies across samples. U.S. (but not German) men’s madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement negatively correlated with their sexual satisfaction in romantic relationships, which in turn predicted lower general relationship satisfaction. Among women, madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement did not correlate with sexual or general relationship satisfaction. These findings (a) support the feminist perspective on the madonna-whore dichotomy, which points to the role of the stereotype in policing women and limiting their sexual freedom, and (b) provide evidence that madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement can have personal costs for men. Increasing awareness to the motivations underlying the madonna-whore dichotomy endorsement and its costs can be beneficial at the social and personal levels for women and men, by providing knowledge that may help in developing focused interventions to change existing perceptions and scripts about sexuality, and perhaps foster more satisfying heterosexual relationships.
Gay men, casual sex, and psychological well-being. Jeremy Bolton. PhD Thesis, Alliant International University, 2019. https://search.proquest.com/openview/378799404c75ab693c6335008cc5f517/
Abstract: Casual sex is common in the gay male community. Gay men typically have more partners and engage in more types of exual activities than heterosexualmen. Despite this, there is little in the way of empirical evidence regarding the impact casual sexual activity may have on gay men’s mental health. Traditionally, voices within the gay male community, and especially early gay rights leaders, have claimed that casual sex is integral to gay male identity and politics. Others in the gay male psychotherapeutic and self-help community have associated casual sexual activity with emotional woundedness. Evidence drawn from evolutionary psychology and primarily heterosexual studies on casual sex have suggested that casual sexual activity is likely to have a positive benefit for gay men. This study collected data from 152 gay men via an on line survey.The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Demographic and relationship status information were collected, as well as information about the participants’ sexual activity over the previous 12 months. Sexual activity information included the number of sex partners, the number of times they had engaged in group sex, and the primary relational context of the majority of their sexual activity. Measures of psychological well-being were also utilized. The results showed that casual sexual activity had a significant positive influence on the participants’ psychological well-being (β=0.25, p<.005). The latent Demographics variable utilized, which was indicated by relationship status and age, also had a positive influence on participants’ psychological well-being (β=0.81,p<.005). The results suggest that gay men benefit psychologically from both casual sex and relationships. It may be that open relationships are common in the gay male community, because gay men may naturally tend towards open relationships in order to benefit psychologically from both relationships and from casual sexual activity. The results suggest that clinicians treating gay men need to avoid bias against casual sexual activity, as casual sexual activity can have psychological benefits for gay men.
Size Matters After All: Experimental Evidence that SEM Consumption Influences Genital and Body Esteem in Men. Kaylee Skoda, Cory L. Pedersen. SAGE Open, June 14, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019857341
Abstract: Previous research has found that images depicted in the mainstream media have a negative influence on self-esteem, particularly among women. With the ease of accessibility and distribution of sexually explicit material (SEM) in recent years, due largely to the rise of the Internet, it has been postulated that consumers of SEM may experience reduced self-esteem in an effect similar to that found in research on exposure to mainstream media imagery. This experimental investigation explored whether exposure to SEM influenced self-esteem in consumers and whether this effect was comparable with that of exposure to mainstream media. Male and female participants were randomly assigned to no imagery, mainstream media imagery, or SEM imagery conditions and asked to report levels of overall global self-esteem, as well as levels of body-specific and genital-specific self-esteem. Mean scores were significantly lower for female participants relative to males overall, but exposure to SEM imagery revealed a significant negative effect on body-specific and genital-specific self-esteem among men only. Implications and limitations of these findings are discussed.
Keywords: sexually explicit material, pornography, media, self-esteem, body image, genitalia
Rabelo, A. L. A., & Pilati, R. (2019). Are religious and nonreligious people different in terms of moral judgment and empathy? Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000277
Abstract: Benevolence, kindness, and empathy are valued virtues among many of the world’s major religions. It is common that people in many cultures see religion as the source of these moral virtues and that one must believe in God to be moral. Despite these widespread assumptions about the associations of religion with morality, some studies raise doubts about the causal connection between them. The main goal of the present study was to test whether religious participants differ from nonreligious ones in terms of how extreme their judgments about moral violations are, how empathic they are, and how disgusting they consider moral violations with disgusting content. It is also our purpose to describe moral judgment processes in an understudied cultural context that has a relevant indigenous characteristic associated with morality. Six hundred fifty-six participants read 6 moral scenarios describing moral violations involving disgusting or nondisgusting contents. They reported their moral reactions using a moral judgment and a moral disgust scale. Measures of empathy, religiosity, religious affiliation, and sociodemographic questions were included in the study. Nonreligious and religious participants had similar levels of empathy and showed similar patterns of moral reactions to different moral violations involving both disgusting and nondisgusting contents. Across 6 moral scenarios, both groups agreed on the most morally wrong and the most disgusting moral violations in similar magnitude. These results question the commonly assumed moral deficit in nonreligious people and support the idea that they can be like religious people when it comes to empathy and judging moral violations.
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Portuguese version of the moral scenarios used in Rabelo and Pilati (2019). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000277
In the following scenarios, “errado” (wrong) was exchanged by “nojento” (disgusting) in the moral disgust scale. We only included the version of the final question associated with the moral judgment scale for the sake of conciseness.
Dog (Cachorro) O cachorro de Francisco foi morto por um carro em frente à sua casa. Francisco ouviu falar que na China as pessoas costumam comer carne de cachorro e ele estava curioso sobre como era o gosto dela. Então ele cortou o corpo do cachorro, cozinhou e o comeu no jantar. Quão errado é que Francisco coma o seu cachorro no jantar?
Boy (Criança) Seu avião caiu no Himalaia. Os únicos sobreviventes são você, um homem e um menino jovem. Vocês três viajam durante dias lutando contra o vento e o frio extremo. Sua única chance de sobreviver é conseguir chegar a um pequeno vilarejo no outro lado da montanha, a vários dias de distância. O menino tem uma perna quebrada e não pode se mover muito rapidamente. As chances de ele sobreviver à jornada são praticamente zero. Sem comida, você e o outro homem provavelmente irão morrer também. O outro homem sugere que você sacrifique o menino e coma seus restos mortais pelos próximos dias. Quão errado é matar esse menino para que você e o outro homem possam sobreviver à sua jornada em segurança?
Cat (Gato) Mateus está brincando com o seu novo gatinho tarde da noite. Ele está vestindo apenas o seu bermudão e o gatinho anda às vezes sobre os seus genitais. Eventualmente, isso excitou Mateus, e ele começa a esfregar os seus órgãos genitais nus ao longo do corpo do gatinho. O gatinho ronrona e parece gostar do contato. Quão errado é que Mateus se esfregue contra o seu gatinho?
Wallet (Carteira) Você está andando na rua quando se depara com uma carteira caída no chão. Você abre a carteira e descobre que ela contém várias centenas de reais em notas bem como a carteira de motorista do dono. Pelos cartões de crédito e outros itens na carteira, é bem claro que o dono da carteira é rico. Você, por outro lado, tem passado por tempos difíceis recentemente e poderia realmente fazer uso de algum dinheiro extra para si mesmo. Quão errado é para você manter o dinheiro que encontrou na carteira para ter mais dinheiro para si mesmo?
CV (Currículo) Você tem um amigo que tem tentado encontrar um trabalho ultimamente sem muito sucesso. Ele imaginou que seria mais provável que ele fosse contratado se ele tivesse um currículo mais impressionante. Ele decidiu colocar algumas informações falsas no seu currículo para torná-lo mais impressionante. Ao fazer isso, ele finalmente conseguiu ser contratado, superando vários candidatos que eram realmente mais qualificados do que ele. Quão errado foi o seu amigo colocar informações falsas em seu currículo para ajudá-lo a encontrar emprego?
Trolley (Trem) Você está no volante de um trem correndo rápido se aproximando de uma bifurcação nos trilhos. Nos trilhos se estendendo à esquerda, está um grupo de cinco trabalhadores ferroviários. Nos trilhos se estendendo à direita, está um único trabalhador ferroviário. O único jeito de evitar as mortes desses trabalhadores é apertar um interruptor no seu painel de instrumentos que irá fazer o trem seguir à direita, causando a morte do trabalhador ferroviário que está sozinho. Quão errado é que você aperte o interruptor para evitar as mortes dos cinco trabalhadores?
Hou, Y., Benner, A. D., Kim, S. Y., Chen, S., Spitz, S., Shi, Y., & Beretvas, T. (2019). Discordance in parents’ and adolescents’ reports of parenting: A meta-analysis and qualitative review. American Psychologist, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000463
Abstract: Parents and adolescents often provide discordant reports on parenting. Prior studies are inconsistent regarding the extent, predictors, and consequences of such discordance. The current study aimed to robustly estimate the extent, potential moderators, and consequences of discordance between parent- and adolescent-reported parenting by (a) meta-analyzing a large number of studies involving both parent- and adolescent-reported parenting (n = 313) and (b) qualitatively summarizing the main methods and findings in studies examining how parent−adolescent discordance in reports of parenting relates to adolescent outcomes (n = 36). The meta-analysis demonstrated a small yet statistically significant correlation between parent- and adolescent-reported parenting (r = .276; 95% confidence interval [CI: .262, .290]); parents perceived parenting more positively than did adolescents, with a small but statistically significant mean-level difference (g = .242; 95% CI [.188, .296]). The levels of parent−adolescent discordance were higher for younger (vs. older) and male (vs. female) adolescents; for nonclinical parents (vs. parents with internalizing symptoms); in more individualistic societies such as the United States; and in ethnic minority (vs. White), low (vs. high) socioeconomic status, and nonintact (vs. intact) families among U.S. samples. The qualitative review highlighted current methodological approaches, main findings, and limitations and strengths of each approach. Together, the two components of the current study have important implications for research and clinical practice, including areas of inquiry for future studies and how researchers and clinicians should handle informant discordance.
Not Dead Yet: Political Learning from Newspapers in a Changing Media Landscape. Erik Peterson. Political Behavior, June 14 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-019-09556-7
Abstract: Shrinking audiences and political coverage cutbacks threaten newspapers’ ability to inform the public about politics. Despite substantial theorizing and widespread concern, it remains unclear how much the public can learn from these struggling news sources. I link measures of the newspaper-produced information environment with large-scale surveys that capture the public’s awareness of their member of Congress. This shows the contemporary effects of newspapers on representative-specific awareness are one-half to one-third estimates from earlier eras. Despite this decline newspapers remain an important contributor to political awareness in a changing media landscape, even for those with limited political interest. These results establish broader scope conditions under which the public can learn from the media environment.
Keywords: Political communication Media and politics Media decline Political information
The "Self-Esteem" Enigma: A Critical Analysis. David A. Levy. North American Journal of Psychology 21(2):305-338. Jun 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332817129_The_Self-Esteem_Enigma_A_Critical_Analysis
Abstract: Despite popular beliefs that self-esteem plays a causal role in a wide range of both positive and negative social behaviors, research shows that it actually predicts very little beyond mood and some types of initiative. This is likely attributable to myriad conceptual and methodological problems that have plagued the literature. Consequently, this article utilizes specific critical thinking principles (metathoughts) to address five key questions: Why does there continue to be a lack of consensus in defining and understanding self-esteem? Given the heterogeneity of selfesteem, where do the distinctions lie? What are the most prominent problems with self-esteem research? Why does our obsession with selfesteem persist? What are the clinical implications for misunderstanding and misusing self-esteem? Metathoughts include: availability bias, confirmation bias, linguistic bias, naturalistic fallacy, nominal fallacy, emotional reasoning, correlation-causation conflation, reification error, assimilation bias, fundamental attribution error, belief perseverance, insight fallacy, and Barnum effect. Recommendations for improvement are discussed.
Cigarette Smoking and Personality Change Across Adulthood: Findings from Five Longitudinal Samples. Yannick Stephan et al. Journal of Research in Personality, June 14 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.06.006
Highlights • Current smoking is related to detrimental personality change. • Smoking cessation was mostly unrelated to personality change. • Smoking is related to personality development across adulthood.
Abstract: Personality traits are related to cigarette smoking. However, little is known about the link between smoking and change in personality. Therefore, the present study examined whether current cigarette smoking and smoking cessation are associated with personality change across adulthood. Participants (n=15,572) aged from 20 to 92 years were drawn from five longitudinal cohorts with follow-ups that ranged from 4 to 20 years. Compared to non-smokers, current smokers were more likely to increase on neuroticism and to decline on extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness over time. Compared to the persistent smokers, those who quit had a steeper decline in agreeableness. Cigarette smoking is related to detrimental personality changes across adulthood, and the pattern was not improved by smoking cessation.
The Standard Errors of Persistence. Morgan Kelly. June 2019. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26903.21922
Abstract: A large literature on persistence finds that many modern outcomes strongly reflect characteristics of the same places in the distant past. However, alongside unusually high t statistics, these regressions display severe spatial auto-correlation in residuals, and the purpose of this paper is to examine whether these two properties might be connected. We start by running artificial regressions where both variables are spatial noise and find that, even for modest ranges of spatial correlation between points, t statistics become severely inflated leading to significance levels that are in error by several orders of magnitude. We analyse 27 persistence studies in leading journals and find that in most cases if we replace the main explanatory variable with spatial noise the fit of the regression commonly improves; and if we replace the dependent variable with spatial noise, the persistence variable can still explain it at high significance levels. We can predict in advance which persistence results might be the outcome of fitting spatial noise from the degree of spatial au-tocorrelation in their residuals measured by a standard Moran statistic. Our findings suggest that the results of persistence studies, and of spatial regressions more generally, might be treated with some caution in the absence of reported Moran statistics and noise simulations.
Moral opportunism: A unique genetic grounding associates lesser guilt from perpetrating injustice with greater sensitivity to being the victim of it. Nikolai Haahjem Eftedal, Thomas Haarklau Kleppestø, Nikolai Olavi Czajkowski, Jonas Kunst, Espen Røysamb, Olav Vassend, Eivind Ystrøm, Lotte Thomsen. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
People vary in their general propensity to perceive and react to injustice. However, moral rules of justice may be gamed through selective endorsement depending on one’s own role as victim or perpetrator. Here, we demonstrate a unique genetic grounding for this latter strategy (as well as for injustice sensitivity in general). The Justice Sensitivity (JS) scale distinguishes between four sub-types of injustice sensitivity. A perceiver of an injustice can either be a victim, an observer, a beneficiary, or a perpetrator to this injustice, and sensitivity to these facets correlate robustly. We use a genetically informative sample of 544 monozygotic- and 736 dizygotic twin pairs to estimate the etiological sources of these associations, analyzing the underlying factor structure while separating the contributions of genetic- versus environmental influences. We find evidence for two substantially heritable latent traits influencing responses across the JS-facets: 1) a generalized injustice sensitivity factor leading to increased sensitivity to injustices of all categories, and 2) a moral opportunism factor causing increased victim sensitivity combined with a decreased propensity to feel guilt from being the perpetrator. This latter moral opportunism factor shares further genetic underpinnings with social dominance orientation.
Be fair: Do explicit norms promote fairness in children? Gorana T. Gonzalez, Katherine J. McAuliffe. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract: Children have an early-emerging expectation that resources should be divided fairly amongst agents (e.g. Sommerville et al., 2013), yet their behavior does not begin to align with these expectations until later in development. This dissociation between knowledge and behavior (Blake, McAuliffe, & Warneken, 2014) raises important questions about the mechanisms that encourage children to behave how they know they should behave. Here we tested whether explicitly invoking fairness norms encourages costly fair decisions in 4- to 9-year-old-children. We examine children’s responses to unequal resource allocations in the Inequity Game (Blake & McAuliffe, 2011) by varying the direction of inequity (advantageous vs disadvantageous inequity) and normative information (to be fair or to act autonomously). Our results show children are more likely to reject advantageous allocation in the fairness norm condition than in the autonomous choice condition, but we do not see this difference when children are presented with disadvantageous allocations. This study showcases children’s costly fairness norm enforcement as a flexible process, one that can be brought in and out of alignment with their knowledge of fairness by shining a spotlight on how one ought to behave.
Religion causes decreases in women’s provocativeness of dress. Liana S. E. Hone, Michael E. McCullough. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y
Abstract: Long-term mating strategies are associated with greater religiosity and studies demonstrate that exposure to religious stimuli down-regulate traits associated with short-term mating strategies in men. Based on tentative evidence that women might also occasionally pursue short-term mating strategies, we evaluated the effects of religiosity on a trait associated with women’s mating strategies: Provocativeness of dress (POD). We predicted that women’s baseline religiosity would be negatively correlated with their POD (measured via skin exposure) on the premise that POD is typically associated with women’s short-term mating strategies. We also predicted that women who completed a religious writing task would illustrate less skin exposure than their peers when asked what they would wear to a hypothetical social gathering with attractive members of the opposite sex in attendance. In a sample of 817 participants, women who classified themselves as highly religious exposed less skin in their day-today lives. Likewise, women who completed a religious writing task illustrated less skin exposure than did their peers. A significant religiosity by writing task condition assignment interaction indicated that the religious writing task was more effective in reducing skin exposure for highly religious participants than it was for less religious participants.
Facial aging trajectories: A common shape pattern in male and female faces is disrupted after menopause. Sonja Windhager et al. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, June 12 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23878
Abstract
Objectives: Despite variation in lifestyle and environment, first signs of human facial aging show between the ages of 20–30 years. It is a cumulative process of changes in the skin, soft tissue, and skeleton of the face. As quantifications of facial aging in living humans are still scarce, we set out to study age‐related changes in three‐dimensional facial shape using geometric morphometrics.
Materials and methods: We collected surface scans of 88 human faces (aged 26–90 years) from the coastal town Split (Croatia) and neighboring islands. Based on a geometric morphometric analysis of 585 measurement points (landmarks and semilandmarks), we modeled sex‐specific trajectories of average facial aging.
Results: Age‐related facial shape change was similar in both sexes until around age 50, at which time the female aging trajectory turned sharply. The overall magnitude of facial shape change (aging rate) was higher in women than men, especially in early postmenopause. Aging was generally associated with a flatter face, sagged soft tissue (“broken” jawline), deeper nasolabial folds, smaller visible areas of the eyes, thinner lips, and longer nose and ears. In postmenopausal women, facial aging was best predicted by the years since last menstruation and mainly attributable to bone resorption in the mandible.
Discussion: With high spatial and temporal resolution, we were able to extract a shared facial aging pattern in women and men, and its divergence after menopause. This fully quantitative three‐dimensional analysis of human facial aging may not only find applications in forensic and ancient human facial reconstructions, but shall include lifestyle and endocrinological measures, and also reach out to studies of social perception.
[Full text and charts at the link above]
1 INTRODUCTION
Throughout life, facial shape changes systematically due to growth, maturation, and senescence. What we see on the surface is the joint effect of aging and other processes in several tissue layers. Despite variation in lifestyle and environment, the first signs of facial aging become apparent between the ages of 20 and 30 (Albert, Ricanek Jr., & Patterson, 2007; Windhager & Schaefer, 2016). Facial aging results from cumulative age‐related changes in the skin, soft tissue, and skeleton of the face (Mendelson & Wong, 2012). Its manifestations reflect the combined effects of gravity, facial volume loss, progressive bone resorption, decreased tissue elasticity, and redistribution of fat (Coleman & Grover, 2006). In this article, we focus on age‐related changes in facial shape, leaving aside changes that occur in facial texture, color, and amount of facial hair. Quantifying aging patterns is not only crucial in the fields of facial reconstruction and aesthetic rejuvenation, but is also important in studies of facial recognition as well as interpersonal perception and stereotyping.
In the centennial anniversary issue of this journal, Bogin, Varea, Hermanussen, and Scheffler (2018) have just updated the Bogin classification system of human life history stages. In our study, we focus on those stages underrepresented in the physical anthropological literature (Ice, 2003): gradual decline (35–50 years), transition/degeneration age (>50 years to senescence), and senescence/old age, which shows variable onset and progression as a function of prior levels of somatic and cognitive reserves. Also, Kirkwood (2017) stresses the variability of aging, caused by “a process of progressive accumulation of defects that stem ultimately from random damage” (p. 1070). Despite individual variation in onset and progression, human facial aging shows a common pattern of morphological, histological, and dermatological changes, as addressed in numerous biomedical studies (Figure 1). Bone tissues along the orbital rim, especially superomedially and inferolaterally, have been shown to recede with increasing age, while the central orbital parts remain relatively stable throughout life (Kahn & Shaw Jr., 2008). This contributes to a more prominent medial fat pad, elevated medial brows, and the typical lengthening of the lid‐cheek junction in older age (Mendelson & Wong, 2012). Retrusion of the bony midface and the maxilla in adds to building and deepening the nasolabial folds and to increasing facial flatness (Pessa et al., 1998; Shaw Jr. & Kahn, 2007). The lengthening of the nose results from an enlargement of the piriform aperture as the bony edges recede, especially in the ascending process of the maxilla. Together with reduced soft‐tissue laxity, this also leads to a drooping nose tip (Rohrich, Hollier Jr., Janis, & Kim, 2004; Shaw Jr. & Kahn, 2007). Moreover, the height and length of the mandible decrease in older ages, whereas the mandibular angle increases (Shaw Jr. et al., 2010). Mendelson and Wong (2012), however, noted that these standard linear measures fail to identify in‐between areas of reduced facial projection, such as the mandible's prejowl region, which becomes more concave with increasing age (Pessa, Slice, Hanz, Broadbent Jr., & Rohrich, 2008; Romo, Yalamanchili, & Sclafani, 2005; Zimbler, Kokoska, & Thomas, 2001).
Example facial surface scan with aging‐related
features labeled. They are the combined result of skeletal and
soft‐tissue alterations and robust age markers in both sexes. Lines and
wrinkles are signs of aging too, yet their locations across individual
faces are more variable, so that they average out in studies of
age‐specific average shapes like ours. Also, they are more susceptible
to lifestyle and environmental influences. The 3D model of the example
face is publicly available from Artec 3D (https://www.artec3d.com/de/3d‐models/gesichtsscan)
Collagen fibers are responsible for the resilience and main
mass of the dermis. Males have more collagen than females throughout
adult life (Shuster, Black, & McVitie, 1975). With increasing age, the amount, quality, and type of collagen change (Galea & Brincat, 2000; Shuster et al., 1975).
In both sexes, total skin collagen and skin thickness decrease. Yet,
especially after menopause, collagen becomes reduced both in the skin
and bone of female faces. Experimental estrogen administration increases
skin thickness (as summarized by Brincat, Baron, & Galea, 2005), but mice models indicate that also androgen contributes to the thicker male skin (Markova et al., 2004).
The amount and distribution of subcutaneous fat further
contribute to the observable facial shape. This fat is thicker
(especially in the medial cheek) and more unevenly distributed in the
female than in the male face (Keaney, 2016).
With increasing age, however, soft tissue thickness decreases,
especially between 20 and 60 years (Wysong, Joseph, Kim, Tang, &
Gladstone, 2013).
Midfacial ptosis is further enhanced by muscle loss and progressive
muscle shortening and straightening (Buchanan & Wulc, 2015). Donofrio (2000)
ascribed the physical appearance of tissue sagging to either too little
or too much fat (hence the term “sagging paradox”): fat is stored
diffusely in young faces, but older faces pocket fat in distinct areas.
Such processes also account for ptosis of the brows and eyelid drooping,
which already become apparent before age 30 (Zimbler et al., 2001).
Human lips also change throughout adulthood. Dryness
increases with age and is higher on the lower lip than on the upper one
(Lévêque & Goubanova, 2004). In a qualitative illustration of an aged face, Zimbler et al. (2001)
described upper lip flattening and lengthening as well as a thinning
and atrophy of the vermilion (red lip). Like the lips, the external ear
is built solely from soft tissue. Total ear height increases with age
mainly due to lobal height increase in both sexes (Asai, Yoshimura,
Nago, & Yamada, 1996; Brucker, Patel, & Sullivan, 2003). Heathcote (1995) reported a lengthening of the ear by 0.22 mm per year in a cross‐sectional study of people aged 30–93 years.
Based on linear measurements of facial photographs of the same person at two ages, Pitanguy et al. (1998)
derived a second‐order polynomial model to best fit the ptosis of the
midfacial tissues in women with increasing age. Leta, Pamplona, Weber,
Conci, and Pitanguy (2000)
extended this approach toward lateral views, and both research teams
further support most of the above‐described soft‐tissue patterns
regarding eyes, lips, and ears in Brazilian patients of European
descent. Schmidlin, Steyn, Houlton, and Briers (2018)
obtained similar results in African faces and graphed their values in
relation to the work of Sforza and colleagues in Italian faces. They
confirmed the overall pattern, notwithstanding absolute thickness
differences between the populations at a given age stage.
Despite some recent efforts to quantify age‐related shape features of the face beyond single regions (Chen et al., 2015; Mydlová, Dupej, Koudelová, & Velemínská, 2015),
the evidence is still largely qualitative for faces of living humans.
Combining the scarce quantitative studies is also hindered by the
diverse ethnic backgrounds of the participants in these studies (Vashi,
Buainain De Castro Maymone, & Kundu, 2016).
Therefore, we set out to study age‐related facial shape changes in
adults using a geometric morphometric approach. More specifically, we
transferred—for the first time—the geometric morphometric toolkit of
physical anthropology and its study of growth trajectories (Bulygina,
Mitteroecker, & Aiello, 2006; Coquerelle et al., 2011; Mitteroecker, Gunz, Bernhard, Schaefer, & Bookstein, 2004)
to human facial aging, including soft tissue. We study changes in
appearance with chronological age in a genetically and environmentally
homogeneous group from two Croatian islands and a near‐by coastal town,
based on three‐dimensional facial surface scans. Local linear
regressions allow for an unprecedentedly high temporal and spatial
resolution.
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