Effects of Skin Tone and Facial Characteristics on Perceived Attractiveness: A Cross-Cultural Study

A psychophysical experiment was conducted to study how cultural background of the observer may influence the impression of face images, in terms of attractiveness. Eighteen British and 16 African observers participated in the experiment. Each observer viewed 128 face images generated from six original faces, including three races (Caucasian, Oriental and African) and both genders, each manipulated by skin tone and facial characteristics (eye size, horizontal locations of the eyes, and nose length). The experimental results show that although British and African observers both preferred high chroma faces, for British observers the most attractive faces had a hue angle close to 41, whereas African observers preferred more reddish faces. The two observer groups were found to disagree most for skin colours near (a*, b*) = (18, 16). The results also show that the observers tended to be more sensitive to changes in facial characteristics for the faces of their own race than for those of other races.