The Effect Of Smiling Facial Features On Estimation Of Age

Smiling plays an important role in interpersonal communication.Smiling faces are often associated with positive characteristics,such as attractiveness,warmth,friendliness and trustworthiness.However,the preference does not apply to the age estimation of smiling faces.The skin of face is more likely to be deformed by big face movements such as the contraction of the zygomaticus major(mouth region)and orbicularis oculi(eye regions)during smiling.Skin wrinkles and facial features are important factors on age estimation.Therefore,based on the characteristics of smiling faces,this study is to explore the relationship between smile and age estimation.The study is divided into two parts.The first part verified the existence of the phenomenon that "smiling can age faces".The second study explored the psychological causes of the phenomenon that "smile can age faces" from the behavioral and cognitive processing levels by two experiments.StudyⅠexamined the clear discrepancy between the actual effect of smiling on perceived age and the common belief that smiling makes one look younger by direct and ex post estimates.Participants were first asked to estimate the ages of a series of smiling or neutral faces.After that,they were asked to estimate the average age of the set of neutral and smiling faces they had just evaluated.In the experimental session,smiling faces were perceived as older than neutral faces.Nevertheless,after the experiment,consistent with their retrospective evaluations,participants recalled smiling faces as being younger than the neutral faces.StudyⅡ explored the main reasons for the "estimation of the older age of smiling faces" by the local characteristics of smiling faces.The research mainly includes two experiments.Part one divided the face into the eyes and mouth area based on the features of smiling face.Then asked participants to estimate the age of neutral,smiling faces using a local feature pattern of fuzzy faces.They found that smiling faces were judged to be older than neutral faces,regardless of whether the eyes or the mouth was blurred.Age estimates based on eye areas were closer to neutral faces,while mouth areas were the opposite.In the second experiment,We recorded eyemovements as participants estimated age of neutral and smiling faces.The results showed that,compared with the mouth area,the eye areas of the first fixation time is shorter,longer fixation time,and more number of fixation counts;The mouth area of the smiling face received less first fixation time,more fixation time,and fixation counts compared to the neutral face.The results show that in the experimental session,the local features of smiling face are important reasons for the estimation of age,among which shading eye areas are caused much error.Eye movement data also showed that during the age estimation process,the mouth area with emotional characteristics would attract attention,but the eye area was the main source of age information,and would get priority coding(attention bias)and more attention resources.