Invisible and Visible Processing of Facial Attractiveness in Implicit Tasks: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)

Abstract

Facial attractiveness can be automatically perceived in implicit tasks when the faces are visible. Nonetheless, to date, it is poorly understood to what extent facial attractiveness can be processed when faces are invisible. It is also worth exploring the differences between visible and invisible processing of facial attractiveness. To address these issues, the event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded when participants were presented with attractive and unattractive faces under invisible condition (continuous flash suppression paradigm; CFS) and visible condition (gender judgment task). The results indicated that attractive faces elicited a larger P1 amplitude (110–150 ms) compared to unattractive faces, regardless of whether the faces were visible. Attractive faces also elicited a larger N170 amplitude (150–190 ms) compared to unattractive faces under the visible condition. Furthermore, visible faces elicited larger P1 and N250/early posterior negativity (EPN) amplitudes as compared to invisible faces. But only under the attractive condition, the visible faces elicited a larger N170 than the invisible faces. The present study suggested that facial attractiveness can be automatically perceived in the early stage regardless of visibility, although attractiveness processing was somewhat reduced in the absence of visual awareness.

Keywords

awareness / continuous flash suppression (CFS) / event-related potentials (ERPs) / facial attractiveness / implicit processing

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