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 The University of Southern Mississippi

PREFERENCES FOR HUMAN FACES IN DOLPHINS?

by

Laura Azilee Powell

A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Studies Office
of The University of Southern Mississippi
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

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Approved:
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Director
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Urliversity Coordinator, Graduate Studies

May 2005

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 UMI N um ber: 3180157

Copyright 2005 by
Powell, Laura Azilee

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 COPYRIGHT BY

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LAURA AZILEE POWELL
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2005
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 The University of Southern Mississippi

PREFERENCES FOR HUMAN FACES IN DOLPHINS?

by

Laura Azilee Powell

Abstract of a Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Studies Office
of The University of Southern Mississippi
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

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May 2005

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 ABSTRACT

PREFERENCES FOR HUMAN FACES IN DOLPHINS?

by Laura Azilee Powell

May 2005

The current study investigated whether a species of dolphin (Tursiops truncates)

showed a preference for individual and average (composite) human faces as do humans.

Cognitive prototype theory and evolutionary theory suggest that humans (and perhaps

other species) have a cognitive mechanism that promotes the judgment of attractiveness

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based on averageness and symmetry. Additionally, some evolutionary theory research

suggests that this cognitive mechanism may cross species (though this has not yet been
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tested in dolphins). The current study did provide some evidence for a cognitive

evolutionary mechanism. Experiment 1 did provide some evidence that corresponds to

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results found with human adults and infants. The dolphins did look significantly longer at

the attractive compared to the unattractive faces and thus showed preferences similar to
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humans for individual faces. Experiment 2 did not replicate research conducted with

human adults or infants with mathematically averaged face, but demonstrates mixed

results in dolphin preferences for composites. These results differentially affect theories

such as evolutionary theory, cognitive prototype theory, or social learning theory. Finally,

problems with the current study are discussed and options for future research are

provided.

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my dissertation director, Dr. Stan Kuczaj, and the other

committee members, Dr. Sheree Watson, Dr. Tammy Greer, and Dr. John McCoy, for

their advice and support throughout the duration of this project. I would like to thank

MarineLife Oceanarium for the use of their facilities and their dolphins.

I would like to thank my husband, Donald (Disco) Powell, for his love and

support in completing this project. Thanks for all those Saturday mornings we spent

heading to MarineLife with Harry and Roland. I wish to thank my parents, Ramona,

Jerry, and Barb, for all their support and faith in me to complete my goals in life. Special

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thanks to my grandfather, James Nettles, Sr., for your ever vigilant “preaching” and your

constant faith in my abilities.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................... ii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.............................................................................................. iv

LIST OF TABLES...............................................................................................................v

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION.........................................................................................1

n. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE.................................................... 2

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Preferences for Attractive Faces
Significance of Attractiveness Preferences
Theories Regarding Attractiveness Preferences
The Present Study
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HI. EXPERIMENT 1 ........................................................................................ 45
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Method
Results

IV. EXPERIMENT 2 .........................................................................................57

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Method
Results

V. DISCUSSION............................................................................................. 62

Experiment 1: Individual faces

Experiment 2: Composite faces
Implications for theories regarding attractiveness preferences
Problems with current study and fixture research

REFERENCES.................................................................................................................. 68

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 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure

1. Top down view of the second level of the main tank............................................. 46

2. Test window and camera placement viewed from outside of tank........................ 47

3. Sheet covering testing window and cameras..........................................................47

4. Camera observation television................................................................................49

5. Mean looking time divided by number of presentations for attractive and

unattractive photographs........................................................................................52

6. Mean looking time divided by the number of presentations for each individual

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photograph.............................................................................................................53
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iv

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 LIST OF TABLES

Table

1. Operational Definitions (from Langlois, et al., 1990)............................................ 21

2. Characteristics of Dolphins Housed in the Main Tank at MarineLife

Oceanarium............................................................................................................45

3. Presentation of Individual Stimuli in Experiment 1............................................... 48

4. Mean Looking Time (seconds) per Dolphin for Attractive and Unattractive
Photographs............................................................................................................ 54

5. Observed Looks and Residuals per Individual Photograph....................................55

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6. Presentation of Composite Stimuli in Experiment 2 .............................................. 58

7. Mean Looking Time for Composite Faces (seconds)............................................. 59

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8. Mean Looking time (seconds) per Dolphin for Composite Photographs 59

9. Observed Looks and Residuals per Composite Photograph...................................60

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10. Observed Looks per Composite............................................................................. 60

11. Observed Swim by per Composite......................................................................... 61

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 CHAPTER I

PREFERENCES FOR HUMAN FACES IN DOLPHINS?

What is attractiveness? And how do we determine when someone or something is

attractive? These are questions that are surprisingly difficult to answer. Philosophers have

put forth maxims such as “beauty is good,” “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and

“beauty is truth, truth beauty,” but again have not told us what exactly beauty or

attractiveness entails. Although there is little agreement on the definition of

attractiveness, there is surprising agreement on attractiveness judgments (e.g. which

humans faces are seen as more or less attractive) within humans and even across some

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species. Research on attractiveness judgments is important because work has shown that

people assume that attractive individuals have more positive characteristics and treat
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them differently.
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One of the criteria in humans judgments of attractiveness has been found to be

averageness. Cognitive prototype theory and evolutionary theory both suggest a cognitive

mechanism predisposing the use of this criterion in attractiveness judgments and predict
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the same preferences in other species. Social learning theory on the other hand predicts

different preferences in different species. The purpose of this work is to review consensus

in attractiveness judgments and the theories of attractiveness preferences and to test

whether Tursiops truncates evidence similar attractiveness preferences. If Tursiops

truncates is found to prefer average humans faces as do humans, this would provide

support for Cognitive Prototype and evolutionary theories of attractiveness preferences,

and evidence refuting social learning theory.

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 CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Preferences for Attractive Faces

Work Evidencing Consensus

Several decades of research has revealed human consensus in attractiveness

preferences across different ages and cultures. In one such study, Murphy, Nelson, and

Cheap (1981) had undergraduate students judge a series of high school yearbook pictures

on attractiveness, academic achievement, and sociability. They found agreement among

participants when judging attractiveness of the high school photographs. Murphy, et al.

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(1981) also found correlations between attractiveness, academic achievement and

sociability which will be discussed later.

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In a study linking adult and children’s judgments of attractiveness, Kissler and
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Bauml (2000) had 9 and 12-year old girls and their mothers judge the attractiveness of

women’s and girls’ faces. Mothers and daughters were independently asked to pick the

most attractive face(s) from a series of paired faces of female college students and 10-
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year old girls presented in separate blocks. The results demonstrated that mother and

daughter preferences for women’s faces were not reliably different although slight

differences were seen for judgment of girl’s faces. Mother and daughter judgments of girl

faces were in the same general direction, but preference strength was weaker for

daughters.

Researchers have conducted impressive and groundbreaking research

investigating attractiveness preferences in infancy. Samuels and Ewy (1985) were the

first to show preferences for attractive adult faces in young infants. They presented 3 and

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 3

6 month old infants with adult faces that had been previously rated by adults as either

attractive or unattractive. The infants were placed in an infant seat in front of a projection

screen, while two faces were rear-projected on the large screen so that they appeared

directly in front of the infants and were approximately the size of real faces. The infant’s

gaze was recorded, either manually or through videotaping from a hole in the screen

between the two images. An experimenter, who was naive to the locations of the

attractive and unattractive photographs in a given trial, recorded the infants gazing

direction and length of gaze. Infants gazed significantly longer at faces rated attractive by

adults. A significant interaction was also observed between infant gender and the gender

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of the stimulus face. Male infants stared at female faces more, while female infants stared

at both male and female faces equally. These gender differences may be due to
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differences in the visual systems of young male and female infants, as well as, differences
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in male and female facial dimorphism of the projected faces. The authors concluded that

the robustness of the attractiveness effect suggests that attractiveness preferences are

present very early in life.

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In two similar studies, Langlois, Roggman, Casey, Ritter, Rieser-Danner, and

Jenkins (1987) and Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, and Vaughn (1991) extended the results

of Samuels and Ewy (1985). Langlois, et al. (1987) tested 2 - 3 and 4 - 6 month old

infants with an identical visual preference task to test for gazing preferences. Langlois et

al. (1987) presented the infants with attractive/attractive and unattractive/unattractive

pairs of faces along with the unattractive/attractive pairs as used in Samuels and Ewy

(1985). Infants of all ages stared at faces rated attractive by adults longer than those rated

unattractive. However, when considering only attractive/attractive and

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 unattractive/unattractive face pairs, older infants (4- and 6- month olds) but not younger

infants (2- and 3- month olds) stared longer at attractive faces. The authors explained that

this could be due to differences in developmental competence of the visual systems of the

two age groups. It is assumed that 4 and 6 month old infants have more advanced visual

systems that may detect more minute differences between faces. These differences may

also be due to the use of methodology different from Samuels and Ewy (1985).

Presenting the infants with two attractive or two unattractive faces may force the infants

to divide their looking time equally between both attractive and unattractive faces.

Langlois et al. (1991) used a visual preference task to assess the attractiveness

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preferences of 6-month old infants1for white adult male and female faces, black adult

female faces, and infant faces (all previously rated by adults). For all face types, the
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infants looked significantly longer at faces judged attractive by adults.
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Slater, Von der Schulenburg, Brown, Badenoch, Butterworth, Parsons, and

Samuels (1998) and Slater, Bremner, Johnson, Sherwood, Hayes, and Brown (2000)

conducted similar attractiveness preference experiments with infants that were hours old.
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Slater et al. (1998) had infants between 14 and 151 hours old view pairs of young

Caucasian female faces (previously rated as attractive or unattractive by adults). In

addition to previously being scaled for attractiveness, the faces could also be

differentiated by facial expressions (smiling with teeth showing, smiling with lips closed,

and neutral). The young infants in this study looked longer at the attractive faces

regardless of whether the faces were smiling or neutral in expression.

Slater et al. (2000) investigated whether hour-old infants used internal (i.e.

eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, and other internal markings) or external features (i.e. hair,

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 ears when visible, jawline, and cheekline) of the face to determine which faces were

attractive and which were unattractive. The authors digitally switched the internal and

external features of faces, and presented manipulated faces (attractive

extemal/unattractive internal, unattractive external/attractive internal) to infants along

with the normal attractive and unattractive faces (attractive external and internal,

unattractive external and internal) in the standard visual preference task in two

combinations (internal same/external different and external same/internal different).

Newborn infants did not discriminate between attractive and unattractive faces when the

internal features of the paired faces were the same and external features were different.

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However, when the internal features differed, but the external features were held

constant, infants preferred to look at faces with attractive internal features. These findings
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suggest that infants pay more attention to the internal features of schematic face-like
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stimuli (Johnson, Dziurawiec, Bartrip, and Morton, 1992).

Although it is impressive that infants share the same facial preferences as adults,

another impressive area of consensus comes from research conducted on attractiveness

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preferences across different cultures. Thakerar and Iwawaki (1979) explored the cross-

cultural attractiveness preferences of English, Chinese, and Indian females to see if the

judgments of attractiveness were universal or culture specific. They hypothesized that

women of these cultures would judge the attractiveness of Greek males similarly. The

photographs of the Greek males were ranked in the same order regardless of the female

judges’ culture.

Cunningham, Roberts, Barbee, Druen, and Wu (1995) conducted an extensive

cross cultural study involving Asian, Hispanic, White, Black, and Taiwanese judges and

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 6

photographs. In experiment 1, male and female Asian, Hispanic, and White American

students rated the attractiveness of photographs of Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White

women on an 8-point scale11. Ratings were highly correlated for males and females within

each culture. In addition, there were no differences between Asian, Hispanic, and White

judges in their ratings across all targets. In a second experiment, Cunningham et al.

(1995) investigated whether the previous Asian and Hispanic students’ judgments of

attractiveness were influenced by Western culture by asking Chinese students in Taiwan

to rate attractiveness. The Taiwanese students’ judgments of female facial attractiveness

from all cultures were marginally, but not significantly, higher than the ratings by

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American students. Finally, a third experiment was conducted to see if black male

students judgments of attractiveness differed from that of white male students when
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judging photos of black females. Results showed that black and white male students were
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remarkably similar in their judgments of black female attractiveness. While this series of

studies provided strong evidence for cross-cultural agreements of attractiveness, the

influence of the worldwide media should be further investigated. Also, differences in

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judgments across societal classes (SES differences) should be investigated because those

higher in SES and more educated could be more influenced by knowledge base.

Research has revealed that infants (Langlois, et al., 1987; Langlois et al., 1991;

Samuels and Ewy, 1985; Slater et al., 1998; Slater et al., 2000), children (Kissler and

Bauml, 2000), and adults (Cunningham, et al., 1995; Kissler and Bauml, 2000; Murphy,

et al., 1981; Thakerar and Iwawaki, 1979) agree on who is attractive and unattractive

despite varying ages and cultural backgrounds. The next section will provide evidence for

the role of symmetry in judgments of attractiveness.

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 7

Evidence o f Symmetry Effects

Rhodes, Proffitt, Grady, and Sumich (1998) investigated the role of symmetry, as

a possible selection mechanism, in judgments of attractiveness. In experiment 1,

university students judged normal, low, high, and perfectly symmetrical faces on

attractiveness, symmetry, and mate appeal of the opposite sex. Perfectly symmetrical

faces were created by averaging the normal face and its mirror image. The low and high

symmetry faces were created by increasing the distance between mapped out points on

the normal faces and reducing the distance between points on the perfectly symmetrical

faces. Results revealed that perceived attractiveness increased with increases in

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symmetry. In a second experiment, the authors had university students compare

attractiveness of faces at three levels of morphed symmetry (normal, high, and perfect) to
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rule out a blending effect on attractiveness ratings. Participants were forced to choose
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between two morphed symmetrical faces on attractiveness, mate appeal (only on opposite

sex), and symmetry. Results indicated significant attractiveness preferences and higher

mate appeal for more symmetric faces. Also, as an additional evaluation of the symmetry
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of the faces the authors had the students chose the more symmetric face. As was

previously established the most symmetric faces (perfectly symmetrical) were chosen as

more symmetric. These results indicate that symmetry may play a significant role in

ratings of attractiveness, although the authors speculated that symmetry may not fully

account for attractiveness ratings.

Further research on the contribution of symmetry in facial attractiveness was

conducted by Mealey, Bridgstock, and Townsend (1999) with monozygotic co-twin

pairs. Specifically, they were interested in the relationship between attractiveness and

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