Easy on the eyes, or hard to categorize: Classification difficulty decreases the appeal of facial blends

Social information processing often involves categorization. When such categorization is difficult, the disfluency may elicit negative affect that could generalize to a variety of stimulus judgments. In the current studies we experimentally apply this theoretical analysis to two classic and highly socially relevant facial attractiveness phenomena: the beauty-in-averageness effect and the appeal of bi-racial faces. Studies 1 and 2 show that same-race (Caucasian–Caucasian) morphs are rated as more attractive than the individual faces composing them — a classic “beauty-in-averageness effect.” Critically, however, this effect is reduced or eliminated when participants first classify the faces in terms of their “parents,” and only if that classification is difficult. Studies 3 and 4 extend these results to show that classifying bi-racial individuals in terms of their racial identity reduces perceiversʹ ratings of attractiveness and reverses perceiversʹ tendency to smile at them, as measured by facial electromyography (EMG). Together, these four studies support the proposal that facial attractiveness is partially a function of the experience of social categorization, and that such experience depends critically on the nature of the categories into which an individual can be classified.