TY - JOUR
T1 - Categorical perception of human female physical attractiveness and health
AU - Tovée, Martin J.
AU - Edmonds, Laura
AU - Vuong, Quoc C.
PY - 2012/3/1
Y1 - 2012/3/1
N2 - Using realistic three-dimensional female body models, we found evidence for a categorical perception of female physical attractiveness and health in male and female Caucasian observers. In a rating task, we showed that these bodies were rated for attractiveness or health in the same way as real bodies. In a two-alternative forced-choice task, we showed that these bodies were categorized into attractive vs. unattractive or healthy vs. unhealthy nonlinearly, which allowed us to estimate the position of a categorical boundary between attractive and unattractive or healthy and unhealthy bodies. In a delayed match-to-sample task, we measured the sensitivity of discrimination between pairs of bodies. We found significantly better discrimination for pairs that crossed the attractive/unattractive or healthy/unhealthy boundary than pairs that did not, even though the physical changes in both conditions were identical. Thus, categorical perception enhances the perception of physical changes that cross the boundary between discrete perceptual categories of important judgments such as attractiveness or health, which can be a cue for mate selection.
AB - Using realistic three-dimensional female body models, we found evidence for a categorical perception of female physical attractiveness and health in male and female Caucasian observers. In a rating task, we showed that these bodies were rated for attractiveness or health in the same way as real bodies. In a two-alternative forced-choice task, we showed that these bodies were categorized into attractive vs. unattractive or healthy vs. unhealthy nonlinearly, which allowed us to estimate the position of a categorical boundary between attractive and unattractive or healthy and unhealthy bodies. In a delayed match-to-sample task, we measured the sensitivity of discrimination between pairs of bodies. We found significantly better discrimination for pairs that crossed the attractive/unattractive or healthy/unhealthy boundary than pairs that did not, even though the physical changes in both conditions were identical. Thus, categorical perception enhances the perception of physical changes that cross the boundary between discrete perceptual categories of important judgments such as attractiveness or health, which can be a cue for mate selection.
KW - Attractiveness
KW - Categorical perception
KW - Female bodies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=81055147422&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2011.05.008
DO - 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2011.05.008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:81055147422
VL - 33
SP - 85
EP - 93
JO - Evolution and Human Behavior
JF - Evolution and Human Behavior
SN - 1090-5138
IS - 2
ER -