Honors College Thesis
 

Processing Facial Attractiveness Without Central Attention: Evidence from Electrophysiological Measures

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  • Jung, Ruthruff, Tybur, Gaspelin, and Miller (2012) reported behavioral evidence that the perception of facial attractiveness requires central attentional resources. We evaluated this conclusion using more sensitive electrophysiological measures. Participants first made an attractiveness rating on faces to validate the assigned level of attractiveness (low vs. high). They then performed a dual-task experiment. The purpose of Task 1, a tone/noise discrimination, was to use up central attentional resources. For Task 2, one attractive face and one less-attractive face were presented side-by-side, and participants indicated the location of the more attractive face. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the two tasks was 50, 200, or 1,000 ms. The N2pc elicited by Task-2 attractive face was used to track the allocation of spatial attention over time. Although we observed the usual postponement of behavioral responses at short SOAs, we did not observe any postponement of the N2pc elicited by the more attractive face. We thus conclude, contrary to previous behavioral studies, that attractiveness can be judged automatically, even while central attentional resources are still allocated to Task 1. Key Words: Facial Attractiveness, Central Attention, N2pc, Even-Related Potentials, PRP
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  • Pending Publication
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  • 2020-05-30 to 2022-06-30

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