Abstract
This study investigated impression factors related to the attractiveness evaluation of expressive faces, through rating experiments. In experiment1, the attractiveness rating on three types of expression form was conducted: neutral faces of neutral form not expressing any specific emotion, happy faces of positive form expressing a happy emotion, and sad faces of negative form expressing a sad emotion. As a result, positive form was more attractive than the neutral form, whereas the negative form was less attractive than the neutral form. In experiment2, the attractiveness rating and the impression rating by using the Semantic Differential method were conducted. Correlation analyses between attractiveness and the composite scores of impressions for each type of expression form showed that “Intellectual-beauty” impression was important for the attractiveness evaluation of neutral form and negative form, whereas “Mildness” impression as well as “Intellectual-beauty” impression was important for the attractiveness evaluation of happy face. These results suggest that the key impression factors related to the attractiveness evaluation were different for each type of expressive forms. There is a possibility that a common psychological criterion is used for attractiveness evaluation of neutral face and sad face, unlike with happy face.
