Abstract
Although previous studies have found that repeated exposure has an influence on the judgment of facial attractiveness, how this effect occurs remains unclear. Two experiments were conducted to explore the impact of repeated exposure on facial attractiveness and the processing mechanism. The results of Experiment 1 showed that in the case of large number of exposures, the facial attractiveness judgment for faces with high, moderate, and low attractiveness increased after repeated exposure. The increase in familiarity and liking mediated the relationship between repeated exposure and faces with high attractiveness, while the increase in liking mediated the relationship between repeated exposure and faces with low attractiveness. The results of Experiment 2 showed that in the case of small number of exposures, the facial attractiveness rating of faces with high and moderate attractiveness increased after repeated exposure. The increase in familiarity and liking mediated the relationship between repeated exposure and faces with high attractiveness, while the increase in familiarity mediated the relationship between repeated exposure and faces with moderate attractiveness. The results indicate that both the fluency of cognitive processing and change of affective attitude play an important role when people judge the facial attractiveness during repeated exposure. The present study illustrates the change rule of the evaluation of facial attractiveness, and lays a solid theoretical foundation for further investigation of the dynamic relationship between social characteristics of faces and behavioral decision-making.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Education Sciences Planning Projects of China (BHA190150), MOE (Ministry of Education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (18YJC190027), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (YD2110002004) and the K. C. Wong Magna Fund at Ningbo University.
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Han, S., Shen, J., Wang, X. et al. The impact of repeated exposure on facial attractiveness: The role of cognition and emotion. Curr Psychol 42, 25379–25390 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03653-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03653-3