The effects of facial attractiveness and perceiver's mate value on adaptive allocation of central processing resources

a r t i c l e i n f o Faces capture cognitive resources, and more attractive faces capture more resources. But to be of adaptive value this proportionality should be modulated by properties of the perceiver, including their own level of attractiveness. Here we investigated the allocation of central processing resources for perceivers at different levels of mating market value (high, low) in response to target faces of different levels of attractiveness (attractive, unattractive). We tracked attention allocation by measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs) from the scalp of men while they viewed and rated images of women's faces. As expected, a main effect of attractiveness was found such that attractive faces garnered the largest brain responses. However, perceiver's market value and target face attractiveness interacted, as brain responses to unattractive faces were significantly larger in the low-market-value condition compared to the high-market-value condition, whereas responses to attractive faces were stable across market values. Thus, for men at least, allocation of attention is adaptively modulated by both the attractiveness of a target face and their own market value. The more attractive an individual perceives themselves to be, the less processing resources they appear to devote to the unattractive faces in their environment. Physical attractiveness has been shown to be vital and influential in the context of mate seeking, both for the seeker and their target. Although the body and the face are both considered when people are evaluating the physical attractiveness of others, research has shown that assessments of facial attractiveness alone are deemed more important for both sexes when contemplating potential mate choice The putative adaptive value of facial attractiveness is supported by observations that it is heritable (Cornwell and Perrett, 2008) and related to identifiable, quantifiable features including symmetry, sexual dimorphism and averageness Indeed, facial beauty has been demonstrated to be an indicator of reproductive and overall fitness, fundamental considerations when people are surveying potential mates Put another way, facial attractiveness is an important factor in establishing an individual's value on the mating market (Little and Mannion, 2006). Given this, it is not surprising that humans allocate substantial central (i.e., cognitive) resources to processing facial attractiveness in potential mates and Miller, 2012). But to date this line of research has not incorporated the idea that one's " lower limit " for what they consider acceptable in terms of attractiveness in a potential mate appears to be proportional …