The power of external influences to modify judgments of facial and moral beauty

• Published in: PsyCh journal (Victoria, Australia) Vol. 11; no. 5; pp. 707 - 714
• Main Authors: Glennon, Marcus J., Zeki, Semir
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melbourne John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 01-10-2022; John Wiley & Sons, Inc
• Subjects: beauty judgments; facial beauty; judgmental conformity; moral beauty; neuroaesthetics
• ISSN: 2046-0252; 2046-0260
• DOI: 10.1002/pchj.492

Empirical evidence shows that the often‐made positive correlation between human physical and moral beauty is tenuous. In this study, we aimed to learn whether facial and moral beauty can be psychophysically separated. Participants (n = 95) provided beauty and goodness (i.e., trustworthiness) ratings for pictures of faces, after which they were presented with a fictitious peer rating for the same face and asked to re‐rate the face. We used the difference between the initial and final ratings to quantify the degree of resistance to external influence. We found that judgments of facial beauty were more resistant to external influence than judgments of facial “goodness”; in addition, there was significantly higher agreement within beauty ratings than within goodness ratings. These findings are discussed in light of our Bayesian–Laplacian classification of priors, from which we conclude that moral beauty relies more upon acquired “artifactual” priors and facial beauty more on inherited biological priors.