Eye region as a predictor of holistic facial aesthetic judgment: An event-related potential study

Event-related potentials (ERP) play an important role in the early detection of emotional arousal. Previous studies of aesthetics have shown that the positive component appearing around 200 ms after stimulus (P2) and the larger late positive component (LPC) are closely related to the early stage of aesthetic judgment. We investigated the temporal features of facial aesthetic judgment on the basis of facial features by using the ERP technique. Participants were instructed to predict holistic face aesthetic level based on the regions of eyes, mouth, or nose. Behavioral results show that holistic score predictions based on the eye region were no different to holistic aesthetic ratings. The ERP analysis results show that beautiful eyes and faces elicited a smaller P2 amplitude and LPC amplitude when judging the holistic aesthetic. The P2 effect of facial aesthetics may reflect automatic processing of facial aesthetics and the difference in LPC may be related to motivational attention to facial aesthetics. Because of the similar ERP effect between the holistic facial aesthetic judgment and the aesthetic judgment of eye region, this region may play a significant role in predicting holistic facial aesthetics. The implication is that the eyes are not only a window to the soul, but also a benchmark of beauty.