Can Fashion Aesthetics be Studied Empirically? the Preference Structure of Everyday Clothing Choices

Despite fashion being one of the most common and accessible aesthetic activities in everyday life, very few empirical studies of clothing selection and preferences exist. To address this empirical gap, an online survey of 500 participants was constructed. A four-factor preference structure, Everyday Clothing Preference Factors (ECPF), emerged, consisting of essential, comfortable, feminine, and trendy styles. Further analysis revealed the preference for each of these four factors to be associated with clothing colors and individual differences. The transferability of ECPF across three preference judgment types (clothing one likes and owns, clothing one likes but does not own, and clothing one owns but does not like) revealed the robustness of the preference structure, through which a short questionnaire version of ECPF was created. The paper concludes by discussing the implications and impact of scientifically studying fashion as an object of aesthetics and empirical study

Summary

The brain circuitry processing rewarding and aversive stimuli is hypothesized to be at the core of motivated behavior. In this study, discrete categories of beautiful faces are shown to have differing reward values and to differentially activate reward circuitry in human subjects. In particular, young heterosexual males rate pic-tures of beautiful males and females as attractive, but exert effort via a keypress procedure only to view pictures of attractive females. Functional magnetic reso-nance imaging at 3 T shows that passive viewing of beautiful female faces activates reward circuitry, in particular the nucleus accumbens. An extended set of subcortical and paralimbic reward regions also appear to follow aspects of the keypress rather than the rating procedures, suggesting that reward circuitry function does not include aesthetic assessment

Cosmetics as a feature of the extended human phenotype: modulation of the perception of biologically important facial signals.

Research on the perception of faces has focused on the size, shape, and configuration of inherited features or the biological phenotype, and largely ignored the effects of adornment, or the extended phenotype. Research on the evolution of signaling has shown that animals frequently alter visual features, including color cues, to attract, intimidate or protect themselves from conspecifics. Humans engage in conscious manipulation of visual signals using cultural tools in real time rather than genetic changes over evolutionary time. Here, we investigate one tool, the use of color cosmetics. In two studies, we asked viewers to rate the same female faces with or without color cosmetics, and we varied the style of makeup from minimal (natural), to moderate (professional), to dramatic (glamorous). Each look provided increasing luminance contrast between the facial features and surrounding skin. Faces were shown for 250 ms or for unlimited inspection time, and subjects rated them for attractiveness, competence, likeability and trustworthiness. At 250 ms, cosmetics had significant positive effects on all outcomes. Length of inspection time did not change the effect for competence or attractiveness. However, with longer inspection time, the effect of cosmetics on likability and trust varied by specific makeup looks, indicating that cosmetics could impact automatic and deliberative judgments differently. The results suggest that cosmetics can create supernormal facial stimuli, and that one way they may do so is by exaggerating cues to sexual dimorphism. Our results provide evidence that judgments of facial trustworthiness and attractiveness are at least partially separable, that beauty has a significant positive effect on judgment of competence, a universal dimension of social cognition, but has a more nuanced effect on the other universal dimension of social warmth, and that the extended phenotype significantly influences perception of biologically important signals at first glance and at longer inspection

Categorical perception of morphed facial expressions

Using computer-generated line-drawings, Etcoff and Magee (1992) found evidence of categorical perception of facial expressions. We report four experiments that replicated and extended Etcoff and Magee's findings with photographic-quality stimuli. Experiments 1 and 2 measured identification of the individual stimuli falling along particular expression continua (e.g. from happiness to sadness) and discrimination of these stimuli with an ABX task in which stimuli A, B, and X were presented sequentially; subjects had to decide whether X was the same as A or B. Our identification data showed that each expression continuum was perceived as two distinct sections separated by a category boundary. From these identification data we were able to predict subjects' performance in the ABX discrimination task and to demonstrate better discrimination of cross-boundary than within-category pairs; that is, two faces identified as different expressions (e.g. happy and sad) were easier to discriminate than two faces of equal physical difference identified as the same expression (e.g. both happy). Experiments 3 and 4 addressed two new issues arising from Etcoff and Magee's (1992) data and the results of our own Experiments 1 and 2: (1) that they might reflect artefacts inherent in the use of single continua ranging between two prototypes - for example, a range effect or an anchor effect, (2) given that the ABX procedure incorporates a short-term memory load, discrimination data obtained with this task might reflect a short-term memory rather than a perceptual phenomenon. We found no support for either of these reinterpretations and further evidence of categorical perception.</p

Categorical perception of morphed facial expressions

Using computer-generated line-drawings, Etcoff and Magee (1992) found evidence of categorical perception of facial expressions. We report four experiments that replicated and extended Etcoff and Magee's findings with photographic-quality stimuli. Experiments 1 and 2 measured identification of the individual stimuli falling along particular expression continua (e.g. from happiness to sadness) and discrimination of these stimuli with an ABX task in which stimuli A, B, and X were presented sequentially; subjects had to decide whether X was the same as A or B. Our identification data showed that each expression continuum was perceived as two distinct sections separated by a category boundary. From these identification data we were able to predict subjects' performance in the ABX discrimination task and to demonstrate better discrimination of cross-boundary than within-category pairs; that is, two faces identified as different expressions (e.g. happy and sad) were easier to discriminate than two faces of equal physical difference identified as the same expression (e.g. both happy). Experiments 3 and 4 addressed two new issues arising from Etcoff and Magee's (1992) data and the results of our own Experiments 1 and 2: (1) that they might reflect artefacts inherent in the use of single continua ranging between two prototypes - for example, a range effect or an anchor effect, (2) given that the ABX procedure incorporates a short-term memory load, discrimination data obtained with this task might reflect a short-term memory rather than a perceptual phenomenon. We found no support for either of these reinterpretations and further evidence of categorical perception.</p

Beautiful Faces Have Variable Reward Value fMRI and Behavioral Evidence

AbstractThe brain circuitry processing rewarding and aversive stimuli is hypothesized to be at the core of motivated behavior. In this study, discrete categories of beautiful faces are shown to have differing reward values and to differentially activate reward circuitry in human subjects. In particular, young heterosexual males rate pictures of beautiful males and females as attractive, but exert effort via a keypress procedure only to view pictures of attractive females. Functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 T shows that passive viewing of beautiful female faces activates reward circuitry, in particular the nucleus accumbens. An extended set of subcortical and paralimbic reward regions also appear to follow aspects of the keypress rather than the rating procedures, suggesting that reward circuitry function does not include aesthetic assessment