Social transmission of leadership preference:knowledge of group membership and partisan media reporting moderates perceptions of leadership ability from facial cues to competence and dominance

While first impressions of dominance and competence can influence leadership preference, social transmission of leadership preference has received little attention. The capacity to transmit, store and compute information has increased greatly over recent history, and the new media environment may encourage partisanship (i.e. ‘echo chambers’), misinformation and rumour spreading to support political and social causes and be conducive both to emotive writing and emotional contagion, which may shape voting behaviour. In our pre-registered experiment, we examined whether implicit associations between facial cues to dominance and competence (intelligence) and leadership ability are strengthened by partisan media and knowledge that leaders support or oppose us on a socio-political issue of personal importance. Social information, in general, reduced well-established implicit associations between facial cues and leadership ability. However, as predicted, social knowledge of group membership reduced preferences for facial cues to high dominance and intelligence in out-group leaders. In the opposite-direction to our original prediction, this ‘in-group bias’ was greater under less partisan versus partisan media, with partisan writing eliciting greater state anxiety across the sample. Partisanship also altered the salience of women’s facial appearance (i.e., cues to high dominance and intelligence) in out-group versus in-group leaders. Independent of the media environment, men and women displayed an in-group bias toward facial cues of dominance in same-sex leaders. Our findings reveal effects of minimal social information (facial appearance, group membership, media reporting) on leadership judgements, which may have implications for patterns of voting or socio-political behaviour at the local or national level

Own attractiveness and perceived relationship quality shape sensitivity in women’s memory for other men on the attractiveness dimension

Although recent work suggests that opposite-sex facial attractiveness is less salient in memory when individuals are in a committed romantic relationship, romantic relationship quality can vary over time. In light of this, we tested whether activating concerns about romantic relationship quality strengthens memory for attractive faces. Partnered women were exposed briefly to faces manipulated in shape cues to attractiveness before either being asked to think about a moment of emotional closeness or distance in their current relationship. We measured sensitivity in memory for faces as the extent to which they recognized correct versions of studied faces over versions of the same person altered to look either more or less-attractive than their original (i.e. studied) version. Contrary to predictions, high relationship quality strengthened hit rate for faces regardless of the sex or attractiveness of the face. In general, women’s memories were more sensitive to attractiveness in women, but were biased toward attractiveness in male faces, both when responding to unfamiliar faces and versions of familiar faces that were more attractive than the original male identity from the learning phase. However, findings varied according to self-rated attractiveness and a psychometric measure of the quality of their current relationship. Attractive women were more sensitive to attractiveness in men, while their less-attractive peers had a stronger bias to remember women as more-attractive and men as less-attractive than their original image respectively. Women in better-quality romantic relationships had stronger positive biases toward, and false memories for, attractive men. Our findings suggest a sophisticated pattern of sensitivity and bias in women’s memory for facial cues to quality that varies systematically according to factors that may alter the costs of female mating competition (‘market demand’) and relationship maintenance

Skin Blood Perfusion and Oxygenation Colour Affect Perceived Human Health

Skin blood perfusion and oxygenation depends upon cardiovascular, hormonal and circulatory health in humans and provides socio-sexual signals of underlying physiology, dominance and reproductive status in some primates. We allowed participants to manipulate colour calibrated facial photographs along empirically-measured oxygenated and deoxygenated blood colour axes both separately and simultaneously, to optimise healthy appearance. Participants increased skin blood colour, particularly oxygenated, above basal levels to optimise healthy appearance. We show, therefore, that skin blood perfusion and oxygenation influence perceived health in a way that may be important to mate choice

Women’s facial redness increases their perceived attractiveness : mediation through perceived healthiness

In the present research, we investigated whether the red-attraction relation that has been observed for men viewing women may also be observed with regard to women’s facial redness. We manipulated facial redness by slightly increasing or decreasing the redness on the faces of baseline pictures of target women, and then had men judge the attractiveness of the women. We also examined healthiness perceptions as a mediator of the redness-attraction relation, along with several other candidate mediator variables. A series of experiments showed that increased redness led to increased ratings of attractiveness, and decreased redness led to decreased ratings of attractiveness. Perceived healthiness was documented as a mediator of the influence of female facial redness on male perceptions of attractiveness, and this mediation was independent of other candidate mediator variables. The findings highlight the importance of attending to facial coloration as an attraction-relevant cue and point to interesting areas for subsequent research.PostprintPeer reviewe

Facial shape analysis identifies valid cues to aspects of physiological health in Caucasian, Asian and African populations

Facial cues contribute to attractiveness, including shape cues such as symmetry, averageness and sexual dimorphism. These cues may represent cues to objective aspects of physiological health, thereby conferring an evolutionary advantage to individuals who find them attractive. The link between facial cues and aspects of physiological health is therefore central to evolutionary explanations of attractiveness. Previously, studies linking facial cues to aspects of physiological health have been infrequent, have had mixed results, and have tended to focus on individual facial cues in isolation. Geometric morphometric methodology (GMM) allows a bottom-up approach to identifying shape correlates of aspects of physiological health. Here, we apply GMM to facial shape data, producing models that successfully predict aspects of physiological health in 272 Asian, African and Caucasian faces ? percentage body fat (21.0% of variance explained), body mass index (BMI; 31.9%) and blood pressure (BP; 21.3%). Models successfully predict percentage body fat and blood pressure even when controlling for BMI, suggesting that they are not simply measuring body size. Predicted values of BMI and BP, but not percentage body fat, correlate with health ratings. When asked to manipulate the shape of faces along the physiological health variable axes (as determined by the models), participants reduced predicted BMI, body fat and (marginally) BP, suggesting that facial shape provides a valid cue to aspects of physiological healthpublishersversionPeer reviewe

Attractive skin coloration: Harnessing sexual selection to improve diet and health

In this paper we review the mechanisms through which carotenoid coloration could provide a sexually selected cue to condition in species with elaborate color vision. Skin carotenoid pigmentation induced by fruit and vegetable consumption may provide a similar cue to health in humans (particularly light-skinned Asians and Caucasians). Evidence demonstrates that carotenoid-based skin coloration enhances apparent health, and that dietary change can perceptibly impact skin color within weeks. We find that the skin coloration associated with increased fruit and vegetable consumption benefits apparent health to a greater extent than melanin pigmentation. We argue that the benefits to appearance may motivate individuals to improve their diet and that this line of appearance research reveals a potentially powerful strategy for motivating a healthy lifestyle

Eating fruit and vegetables gives your skin a golden glow

Despite worldwide campaigns to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, intake is commonly inadequate, precipitating an estimated 2.6 million premature deaths per year worldwide. A British Academy Wolfson Research Professorship awarded to David Perrett has provided support to explore a new basis of motivating dietary change, essentially by appealing to vanity. With that support we found that eating carotenoid-rich fruit and vegetables leads to an attractive looking skin colour, and that showing people these appearance benefits can encourage dietary improvement.https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/668/BAR21-02-Perrett.pd

Clustering of supernova Ia host galaxies

For the first time the cross-correlation between type Ia supernova host galaxies and surrounding field galaxies is measured using the Supernova Legacy Survey sample. Over the z=0.2 to 0.9 redshift range we find that supernova hosts are correlated an average of 60% more strongly than similarly selected field galaxies over the 3-100 arcsec range and about a factor of 3 more strongly below 10 arcsec. The correlation errors are empirically established with a jackknife analysis of the four SNLS fields. The hosts are more correlated than the field at a significance of 99% in the fitted amplitude and slope, with the point-by-point difference of the two correlation functions having a reduced $\chi^2$ for 8 degrees of freedom of 4.3, which has a probability of random occurrence of less than 3x10^{-5}. The correlation angle is 1.5+/-0.5 arcsec, which deprojects to a fixed co-moving correlation length of approximately 6.5+/- 2/h mpc. Weighting the field galaxies with the mass and star formation rate supernova frequencies of the simple A+B model produces good agreement with the observed clustering. We conclude that these supernova clustering differences are primarily the expected outcome of the dependence of supernova rates on galaxy masses and stellar populations with their clustering environment.Comment: ApJ (Letts) accepte

Supernova Shock Breakout from a Red Supergiant

Massive stars undergo a violent death when the supply of nuclear fuel in their cores is exhausted, resulting in a catastrophic "core-collapse" supernova. Such events are usually only detected at least a few days after the star has exploded. Observations of the supernova SNLS-04D2dc with the Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope reveal a radiative precursor from the supernova shock before the shock reached the surface of the star and show the initial expansion of the star at the beginning of the explosion. Theoretical models of the ultraviolet light curve confirm that the progenitor was a red supergiant, as expected for this type of supernova. These observations provide a way to probe the physics of core-collapse supernovae and the internal structures of their progenitor starsComment: Science, in press. 32 pages, 7 figure