Beauty based on… lips?
Lip size could influence perceptions of facial attractiveness, stated a study – “Distortions of lip size bias perceived facial attractiveness” by David Alais, Jacqueline Stephens and Jessica Taubert – that was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The researchers recruited 32 students – 16 female and 16 male – for the experiments. The participants were shown images of a digitally manipulated proxy image for a human face with alterations around a ‘norm’.
The study used digitally manipulated images to alter lip size on both male- and female-appearing faces and asked participants to rate their attractiveness. Overall, participants were shown 168 faces, representing seven lip sizes with lips thinner or plumper than the norm. Participants were given 1.25s to register how relatively attractive they found each image.
While the general results show participants thought slightly plumper lips were more attractive on the female face and slightly thinner lips more attractive on a male face, when disaggregated by gender, men preferred a female face with natural lip size image, with women preferring plumper lips.
Main findings
- Overall findings: Pooling all observers, the highest ratings were for male images with thinner lips and female images with plumper lips.
- Gendered preferences: Female participants showed an even stronger preference for plumper lips when viewing images of female faces, while male participants preferred female faces with unaltered lips. This suggests that attractiveness judgments are shaped by the observer’s own gender.
- The adaptation effect: Exposure to a face with lips altered to be plumper or thinner influenced subsequent attractiveness judgements of new faces. Exposure to plump lips led to future higher ratings for faces with plump lips, and exposure to thin lips led to future higher ratings for thin-lipped faces. Psychologists have seen this adaptation effect influence visual preference for a range of stimuli, from art to food preference.
- Lips in isolation: Interestingly, the study found that adaptation to lips alone, without the context of the whole face, also produced shifts in attractiveness ratings, suggesting that lip size is encoded by the brain as a distinct feature, separate from the overall facial structure.
Implications for body image
Alais, who specializes in visual perception and cognitive neuroscience, said these findings have potential implications for the growing popularity of cosmetic procedures, particularly lip augmentation. Not only do the results indicate that lip plumping may primarily appeal to women, but also that exposure to faces with artificially enhanced lip sizes could lead to “lip dysmorphia”, where one’s perception of what is considered attractive shifts towards a new plumper norm.
“Our research highlights the subjective nature of beauty and the powerful influence of social and cultural factors,” Alais said. “As cosmetic procedures become more accessible, it’s crucial to understand how these interventions can shape our perceptions and potentially lead to unrealistic beauty standards.”
Next steps
“While not directly part of this study, the results suggest a complex interplay between social conditioning and gender,” Alais said.
This study is said to provide valuable insights into how people respond to facial features based on immediately prior as well as acculturated visual experience, but “further research is needed to explore the long-term effects of cosmetic procedures on body image and the potential for visual adaptation to contribute to body dysmorphia,” Alais ended.
