The Effect of Attractiveness on Recognition Memory for Faces

Author(s): J. W. Shepherd and H. D. Ellis

Source: The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Sep., 1973), pp. 627-633
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1421948
Accessed: 03-11-2015 14:18 UTC

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 The Effect of Attractivenesson
Recognition Memory for Faces
J. W. Shepherd and H. D. Ellis
Universityof Aberdeen,Scotland

A set of 27 slides of female faces was shownto a groupof subjects,and recogni-

tion tests were given immediately,6 days, and 35 days after that presentation.
There was a significantdecrementin recognitionscoresfor faces of moderate
attractivenessat the 35-daytest, but not for faces of high or low attractiveness.
A parallelis drawnwith the effectsof arousalon verballearning.

The ability to identify the faces of people one has seen before is impor-
tant in everyday life, and adults and children show a high level of per-
formance in recognizing faces after a single presentation. For example, Yin
(1969) found fewer errors in the recognition of faces than in the recog-
nition of houses, airplanes, or stick figures. Scapinello and Yarmey (1970)
reported that faces were remembered better than pictures of dogs and of
buildings; and Goldstein and Chance (1970) noted that there was a
higher proportion of faces recognized than of ink blots or photographs of
snow crystals.
While faces in general appear to be better remembered than other
homogeneous pictorial material, some experimentershave noted that faces
differ in their memorability. Cross, Cross, and Daly (1971) suggest that
one characteristic distinguishing more memorable faces from less mem-
orable ones is 'beauty.' They report an experiment in which subjects were
better at recognizing faces they had previously identified as 'attractive'
than those they had not so identified. Cross et al. required their subjects
to scan an array of photographs to select the attractive faces, and while
the authors reject an explanation of their results in terms of differences
in time spent looking at faces of different attractiveness, they do not
present any evidence on that inspection time.
Cross et al. offer the hypothesis that attractive faces are more actively
attended to, but studies in verbal learning indicate that evaluative judg-
ments of words are associated with their ease of recall. Amster (1964)
found that words evaluated as 'good' were recalled better than words

627
American Journal of Psychology
1973, Vol. 86, No. 3, pp. 627-633

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628 SHEPHERD AND ELLIS

rated 'bad,' which in turn were more readily recalled than neutral words.
These results were attributed both to associative effects of evaluative
words and to the possibility of facilitation due to affective arousal. Thus,
if beautiful faces elicit positive evaluations, which presumablythey do, the
superior recall of beautiful faces in Cross et al.'s experiment might be
attributable to facilitative effects comparable with those in verbal learn-
ing. In addition, however, it would be predicted that 'unattractive' faces
should also be recognized better than 'neutral' faces, a possibility not con-
sidered by Cross et al.
In the case of verbal materials, it is possible that both associative and
arousal effects would operate; but with faces, the arousal effects are likely
to be greater than the associative effects. Investigations of the effect of
arousal on retention have shown that the facilitative effects of arousal
become more marked with increasing time after initial learning (McLean,
1969; Kleinsmith and Kaplan, 1963). If attractive and unattractive faces
do result in greater arousal than neutral faces, there should be less reten-
tion of neutral (versus attractive and unattractive) faces with increasing
time between presentation and recognition.
The following experiment was designed to test the hypotheses that sub-
jects would show a greater decrement in recognition for faces of an inter-
mediate level of attractiveness than for faces of a high or low level of
attractiveness, and that this effect would become more marked with
increasing time.

METHOD

- Stimuli-A stimuluspool of 97 color slides was prepared.Each slide was

a full-facephotographof the head and upperpart of the shouldersof a female
undergraduate. All photographswere taken under standardconditions,with a
neutralgraybackgroundand usinga bouncedflashfor illumination.All the girls
adopteda normal,relaxedpose, withoutsmiling.To eliminatecues from cloth-
ing, all the backgroundof the slide was paintedwith opaquematerial,except
for a circleof fixedsizesurrounding the girl'shead.
The 97 slides were then rated for attractivenessby 40 male and 40 female
undergraduates; none of the girlsin this classhad been used for the photographs.
Small groupsof 2 to 9 of these studentswere shownall the slides in succession
and askedto examineeach face with a view to makinga later judgmentof its
attractiveness,but to make no written response.They were then shown the
series a second time and asked to rate each face on a nine-pointscale from
'most good-looking'to 'least good-looking,'using the other faces in the seriesas
the basis for the comparison.The slides were presentedin differentrandom
ordersto differentgroupsto minimizepositioneffectsin the ratings.
The mean and standarddeviationof the ratingsfor each slide werecomputed,
and a set of 54 stimuliwas selected: 18 stimulifromthe bottomquartileof the

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RECOGNITION MEMORY FOR FACES 629

distribution of ratings (mean 3.0, range 2.22-3.64); 18 from the semiquartile

above and the semiquartile below the median of the ratings (mean 4.66, range
4.11-5.12); and 18 from the top quartile (mean 6.18, range 5.63-7.02).
--Design-A repeated-measures design was used, with all subjects tested for
retention immediately after the presentation of the stimuli, 6 days after presenta-
tion, and 35 days after presentation. The design also incorporated a complete
replication of the experiment, two groups of subjects being tested on different
sets of stimuli. To accomplish this, the 54 stimuli selected for the experiment
were divided into two sets (A and B) that were matched for mean and range
at each level of attractiveness, there being 9 slides of low, 9 of medium, and 9 of
high attractiveness in each set. Set A was shown to one group of subjects, and
set B to a different group of subjects for the initial learning task; the order of
stimuli within each set was randomized.
For the three recognition tests, each set was divided into three matched sub-
sets of 9 slides, with 3 high-, 3 medium-, and 3 low-attractiveness slides in each
subset. For each recognition test, 9 pairs of stimuli were prepared, with one slide
from set A and one from set B in each pair, and at each session, a face from
each level of attractiveness in set A was paired with a face from each level of
attractiveness in set B. Each pair of slides was projected simultaneously with
the faces side by side, the position of each face (left or right) being determined
by the toss of a coin and the order of the pairs being randomized. A different
subset was used for each recognition test, the first immediately after initial
presentation, and the second and third after 6 days and 35 days.
- Procedure - Subjects were assigned alphabetically to two
groups in separate
rooms, with approximately equal numbers and a similar sex ratio in each group.
Stimuli in set A were shown to one group and the stimuli in set B to the other
group. Stimuli were projected on a screen by a specially adapted Hanimex
Rondette projector; the 3-sec exposure time per stimulus and the 1-sec inter-
stimulus interval were controlled by a timer (Forth Instruments). The circular
image measured 18 in. in diameter. The subjects were asked to try to memorize
the faces they would be shown; they were also told that they would later be
shown some of these slides again, together with new slides, and that they would
be required to recognize those they had seen before.
Approximately 3 min after the initial presentation, the first recognition session
was run. Nine pairs of stimuli were presented via parallel projectors. Subjects
were told they would be shown pairs of slides, one slide of each pair from the
set they had already been shown and the other slide a new one they had not seen
previously. Their task was to indicate on a response sheet whether the previously
shown slide was on the left or on the right of the pair now presented. They were
also asked to indicate whether they had ever seen any of the people whose pic-
tures were shown.
The second and third recognition sessions were run at the beginning of the
regular lecture periods 6 days and 35 days after initial presentation. Subjects
were given no warning before either session that a recognition test would be
run. Instructions for these sessions were the same as those given at the first rec-
ognition test.
The experimental subjects were 29 male and 25 female graduate students from
a college of education who were attending a course in psychology at the Univer-

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630 SHEPHERD AND ELLIS

sity of Aberdeen. Of these, 2 were discarded because they reported previous ac-
quaintance with one of the people whose photographs were used, and 14 were
discarded because they failed to attend all three testing sessions. Two more male
subjects were randomly discarded to equalize the number of male and female
subjects, there being finally 36 subjects, 18 men and 18 women.

RESULTS

The number of stimuli correctly recognized at each session was 8.05 for
immediate testing, 7.28 for testing after 6 days, and 6.42 for testing after
35 days. Even after 35 days, the subjects were thus performing well above
chance level (4.5).
For the analysis of results, the scores of the two groups of subjects were
combined for a 2 (levels of sex) X 3 (levels of attractiveness, within sub-
jects) X 3 (testing intervals, within subjects) 'split-splot' analysis of vari-
ance. Two significant F ratios were found: a main effect for testing
interval [F(2, 68) = 15.78, p < .001] and an interaction of attractiveness
and testing interval [F(4, 136) = 10.86, p < .001].
The interaction is illustrated in Figure 1. Analysis of simple main effects
indicated a significant effect for attractiveness at the third testing session,
but not at the first or second; and a difference among testing sessions for
the stimuli of medium attractiveness, but not for those of high or low.
Differences between pairs of means were tested by the Tukey test. At the

3.0

U 2.5 , LOw

LU I 1

of36 subjects
Fig.
Fig. Recognition
1. Recognition
1. scoresfor
scores for stimuli
stimuliof
of high, me diumand low
high, medium, low levels
levels of
of attrac-
attrac-
tivenessat three testing intervals;each point representsthe mean of the scores
of 36 subjects

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RECOGNITION MEMORY FOR FACES 631

third session, the recognition scores for the stimuli of medium attractive-
ness were significantly lower than those for stimuli of high or low attrac-
tiveness, but the difference between recognition scores for the latter two
types of stimuli was not significant. The scores for medium-attractiveness
stimuli at the third testing session were significantly lower than the scores
for medium-attractiveness stimuli at the other two sessions. The scores
for the high- and the low-attractiveness stimuli did not differ significantly
across the three sessions.
As a check, a separate analysis was carried out for each of the two
groups of subjects, those with set A and those with set B stimuli, and in
both analyses the interaction of attractiveness and testing interval was
highly significant, with the decrement in scores for medium-attractiveness
stimuli from second to third sessions making the major contributions to
the interaction. The effect was thus stable across different groups of sub-
jects and for different sets of stimuli.

DISCUSSION

The results support the hypothesis that the memorability of women's

faces is affected by their attractiveness, although this effect was significant
only after an interval of five weeks. This pattern of results approximates
more to that obtained in Kleinsmith and Kaplan's (1963) experiment,
where the independent variable was the subjects' arousal to the stimuli,
than to that in Amster's (1964) study, where the subjects' evaluative rat-
ings of the words served as the independent variable. In the former experi-
ment, initial recall of low-arousal paired associates was higher than that
for high-arousal paired associates, but after a period of 45 min there was
a decline in recall of low-arousal and an increase in recall of high-arousal
paired associates. Amster, in contrast, found that the positively and nega-
tively evaluated words were recalled better than neutral words; recall in
her study was completed within 7 min.
No measure of arousal was taken in the present experiment, but it
seems more likely that attractive and unattractive faces should result in
higher arousal than 'neutral' faces than that the reverse should be the
case. If such differential arousal did occur, then the superior subsequent
recall of high- and low-attractiveness stimuli may be attributable to the
greater reverberation of the trace at initial presentation and its conse-
quently greater persistence over time (Kleinsmith and Kaplan, 1963).
Such processesshould, in theory, result in significantly superior immediate
recall for neutral stimuli, which did not occur in the present experiment.

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632 SHEPHERD AND ELLIS

However, recognition tests for faces after a short interval typically result
in such high scores that the interfering effect of arousal may be minimal,
and it should be noted that, for both sets of stimuli, the initial recognition
of 'neutral' faces was marginally higher than that of high- and low-attrac-
tiveness faces.
An alternative interpretation of these results is that attractive or un-
attractive faces have distinctive features that render them more memorable
than relatively nondescript faces. Such an interpretation would imply that
faces are not remembered as patterns or configurations but by identifying
specific cues or features, a position consistent with that argued by Galper
and Hochberg (1971).
Obviously, both explanations may apply. Specific distinguishing features
may make faces attractive or unattractive, lead to affective arousal, and
result in superior long-term recognition for such faces. It is possible that
subjects form an implicit adaptation level for the attractiveness of faces
or facial features (an adaptation level similar to those formed for other
classes of stimuli; Helson, 1964) and that stimuli which are deviant from
this adaptation level are arousing. There is tentative evidence that this
is the case for judgments of pitch (Sarris, Tews, and Schonpflug, 1970).
Superior retention of these 'deviant' stimuli may be due to the arousal
they induce. Investigations are currently in preparation to investigate this
hypothesis.

Notes
Receivedfor publicationSeptember22, 1972.

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RECOGNITION MEMORY FOR FACES 633

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