NEWBORN INFANTS PREFER ATTRACTIVE FACES

Alan Slater
Charlotte Von der Schulenburg
Elizabeth Brown
Marion Badenoch
University ofExeter

George Butterworth
Sonia Parsons
University of Sussex

Curtis Samuels
University of New England

Several previous experiments have found that infants 2 months of age and older will spend more time
looking at attractive faces when these are shown paired with faces judged by adults to be unattractive.
Two experiments are described whose aim was to find whether the “attractiveness effect” is present soon
after birth. In both, pairings of attractive and unattractive female faces (as judged by adult raters) were
shown to newborn infants (in the age range 14-151 hours from birth), and in both the infants looked
longer at the attractive fat-es. These findings can be interpreted either in terms of an innate perceptual
met-hdnism thdt detec-ts dnd responds specifically to faces, or in terms of rapid learning about faces soon
after birth.

newborns face perception attractiveness

It has been known for some time that infants 2 been equated for age, gender and ethnicity,
months of age and older will spend more time and the “attractiveness effect” seems to be
looking at attractive faces when these are robust in that it is found for stimulus faces that
shown paired with less attractive ones. In the are infant, adult, male, female, and of two
studies reported to date the face pairings have races (African-American and Caucasian)

l Alan Slater, Dcpartmcnt of Psychology, University of Exeter, Wdshington Singer Laboratories, Exeter EX4 4QG;
e-mail: A.M.Slater@exetcr.ac.uk.

INFANT BEHAVIOR & DEVELOPMENT 21 (21, 1998, pp. 345354 ISSN 0163-6383
Copyright 0 1998 Ablex Publishing Corporation All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
34h INFANT BEHAVIOR & DEVELOPMENT Vol. 21, No. 2, 1’2’)1{

(Langlois, Ritter, Roggman. & Vaughn, 1991; two-dimensional schematic face-like pattern
Langlois et al., 1987; Samuels & Ewy, 1985); than either of two patterns consisting of the
babies also preferred attractive to symmetrical same facial features in different arrangements.
faces when these two dimensions were varied A replication of Goren et al.‘s study was
independently (Samuels, Butterworth. Rob- reported by Johnson and Morton (199 I ) who
erts, & Graupner, 1994). use this and other evidence to argue for the
There are, as yet, no reports of infants existence of “Conspec.” which constitutes
younger than 2 months being tested with such some sort of template consisting essentially of
face pairings but it is known that even newborn three dots, which serves to direct the new-
infants quickly learn about faces. Bushnell, born’s visual attention to faces. Other evidence
Sai, and Mullin (1989) Field, Cohen, Garcia, suggests that the newborn’s hypothesized
and Greenberg (1984). and Pascalis, de innate facial representation may be more
Schonen, Morton, Deruelle. and Rabre-Grenet detailed than the hypothetical Conspec. In par-
(1995), reported statistically reliable prefer- ticular it has been demonstrated on many occa-
ences for the mother’s face, compared with sions that newborn (and older) infants will
that of a female stranger. at 49 hrs. 45 hrs, and imitate a variety of facial gestures they see an
78 hrs from birth, respectively. Walton, adult model performing (Mel&off & Moore,
Bower, and Bower ( 1992) reported that infants 1977, 1984, 1992, 1994). Meltzoff (1995) sug-
aged between 12 and 36 hrs from birth pro- gests that newborns “begin life with some
duced more sucking responses in order to see a grasp of people” (p. 43) and that their ability to
videotaped image of their mother’s face, as recognize when their facial behavior is being
opposed to an image of a female stranger‘s copied implies that “there is a representation 01
face. Walton and Bower (1993) reported that their own bodies” (p. 53).
newborn infants who were shown four faces Some clarification of our understanding of
for a total looking time of less than one minute infants’ knowledge about faces, and of the ori-
extracted a facial prototype in that they subse- gins and development of the “attractiveness
quently looked more at a composite of the pre- effect” is likely to emerge when infants
viously seen faces than at a composite of younger than 2 months are tested in the “attrac-
previously unseen faces, where the composites tive/less-attractive” preferential looking para-
were derived by pixel-averaging the features digm, and this paper describes two such
of the exemplar faces. More recently Walton, studies. In both of them newborn infants were
Armstrong, and Bower (1997) have demon- the participants.
strated that newborns recognize a learned face
over the three transformations of photonega-
EXPERIMENT 1
tive transformation, size change, and rotation
in the third dimension of visual space. These In this experiment pairs of attractive/
findings indicate that learning about faces, and less-attractive faces were presented to new-
the formation of a representation of faces, can borns. These faces had been used in an earlier
be extremely rapid in the newborn period. study with infants in the age range 4 to 15
In addition to the evidence suggesting rapid months (Samuels. Butterworth, Roberts, &
learning about faces in the newborn period, Graupner. 1994).
several lines of evidence converge to suggest
that the newborn infant may come into the Method
world with some innately specified representa-
tion of faces. Goren, Sarty, and Wu (1975) Participants
reported that their newborn infants, who aver-
aged 9 minutes from birth at the time of testing, Sixteen newborn infants, 7 girls and 9 boys,
turned their heads more to follow (i.e., track) a between the ages of 14 and IS I hrs (M = 70
Newborns Prefer Attractive faces
hrs) were the participants, and throughout test-
ing they remained in the behavioral state of
alert inactivity (Ashton, 1973). Twelve addi-
tional infants began the experiment but did not
complete testing because of crying and fuss-
ing, and their data were not used.
Stimuli and Apparatus
Sixteen black-and-white photographs of
Caucasian women’s faces, previously used by
Samuels et al. (1994) were the stimuli. They
were all in the age range 18-23 years, and pho-
tographed full-face. These photographs had
been selected from a larger set by Samuels et
al. on the basis of adults’ ratings of attractive-
ness: 8 were judged to be attractive, 8 to be
unattractive. These ratings were independently
confirmed for the purposes of the present
study: 14 adult raters judged the faces on a
7-point scale of attractiveness with 7 being
“very attractive.” The attractive faces had a
mean rating of 4.9 (range 3.5 to 5.7), and the
unattractive faces had a mean rating of 2.4
(range 1.8 to 3.4).
The faces were either smiling or had a neu-
tral expression (for the attractive faces 3 were
smiling showing teeth, 3 smiling with lips
closed, and 2 had neutral expressions; for the
unattractive faces these were 4, 3, and 1,
respectively). The photographs showed the
faces from the crown of the head to the neck-
line below the jaw and ranged in height from
12 to 16 cm, and in width from 8 to 11 cm, and
subtended visual angles of 22-28’ (height) and
15-20” (width) at the viewing distance of
30cm. The stimuli ranged in contrast from
50% to 75%, from hair color (dark) to skin
color.
The stimuli were mounted on cards and pre-
sented against a matte-white screen which mea-
sured 61 x 45 cm, and the sides of the viewing
chamber were hung with matte-white curtain
material. The stimuli were illuminated by two
strip lights placed behind and to both sides of the
infant. On each paired stimulus trial (see below)
the two photographs were equidistant from cen-
ter and separated by 7.5 cm.
047
Procedure and Design
Each infant was brought to the experimen-
tal room in the maternity ward of the hospital,
and seated upright on one experimenter’s knee
with his/her eyes 30 cm (* 2 cm) from the cen-
ter of the screen, and given 8 preferential look-
ing trials, in each of which one of the attractive
stimuli was shown paired with one of the unat-
tractive ones. At no time could the experi-
menter who held the babies see the stimuli
being presented: this was achieved by having
this experimenter look away from the stimulus
screen once the baby was appropriately posi-
tioned. Over the 8 trials, half of the attractive
stimuli were shown on the left and half on the
right, the order being randomly determined.
Across participants the order was counterbal-
anced so that each stimulus was shown an
equal number of times to the left and to the
right. Each trial continued until a total of 20 s
of looking (at one or both stimuli) had accumu-
lated. Thus, each infant was shown all 16 stim-
uli and accumulated a total of 160 s of looking.
It is often the case that when preferences for
one of two paired stimuli are strong many
infants look only at the preferred stimulus
(Slater, 1995), and on a number of trials in this
experiment infants looked only at one stimulus
of the pair shown. It can be argued that on
these trials it is not clear that the infants had the
opportunity to compare both stimuli, and the
results were analyzed both with and without
these “non-compared” trials included (see
below).
The 8 photographs judged attractive were
numbered from Al to A8, and the 8 judged to
be unattractive were numbered from U9 to
U16. There was no obvious reason why any
one of the attractive stimuli (Al-A8) should be
paired with any one of the unattractive ones
(U9-U16) and the infants were tested in four
groups of four where, for each group, the pair-
ings of attractive and unattractive stimuli were
different: stimuli Al through A8 were paired,
respectively, with U9 through U16 (Group l),
U16 through U9 (Group 2), U13 through U16
148
and U9 through Ul2 (Group 3), and U12
through U9 and U 16 through U 13 (Group 4).
Either one or two experienced observers
recorded the infants’ fixations of the stimuli
from peepholes behind and to the left and right
of the viewing chamber. At no time were these
observers visible to the infants and on all trials
the observers did not know whether the attrac-
tive (or unattractive) stimulus was on the right
or left of the screen. Two observers recorded
looking for 40 paired stimulus trials: the
co-author EB was always one of the observers,
and CS and SP acted as the second observer).
The interobserver agreement, measured as the
correlation between the observers’ looking
times to both sides, was high, Pearson Y(38) =
0.851,~ <.OOl
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The report of results is organized into two sec-
tions. The first section focuses on whether the
infants display an “attractiveness effect.” and
presents analyses of individual infants’ prefer-
ences for attractive and unattractive faces, and
the preferences for the individual facial stim-
uli. The second considers the effects of facial
expression and stimulus contrast on the prefer-
ences found.
The stimuli rated as attractive and unattrac-
tive accumulated, respectively, 61.5% and
38.5% of the total looking time. Each newborn
infant gave data for 8 attractive/unattractive
pairings, giving 128 trials in all: for 100 of these
trials the infants looked at both stimuli of the
pair and for 28 (“non-compared” trials) they
looked only at one. The data can be analyzed in
two main ways: (I) overall preferences for the
individual infants, combining data for each
infant across all stimuli shown: and (2) prefer-
ences for the individual facial stimuli. combin-
ing the looking times for each stimulus from all
infant\. These preferences are given in Tables
I and 2, respectively. In these tables the data foi
INFANT IIEHAVIOK & DEVELOPMENT Vol. 21, No. 2, 1WH
all 128 trials are given, and also with the
“non-compared” trials (those where the infant
looked only at one stimulus of the pair shown)
removed. It can be argued that infant looking
times, and percentage looking times, are often
not normally distributed, and that removing tri-
als (for the analyses where the “non-compared”
trials are removed) can result in unbalanced dis-
tributions. For these reasons nonparametric sta-
tistical tests are used to analyze the data.
From the findings with all trials included,
12 of the 16 infants looked longer, overall, at
the attractive than the unattractive stimuli
(Table I ) and these stimuli attracted 61 .S% of
the looking time. This preference for attrac-
tiveness was significant, Wilcoxon
signed-ranks test, T (16) = 18, p <.005. From
the findings with the 28 “noncompared” trials
removed (Table I ) it can be seen that the
attractiveness preference is slightly lower at
58. I%, but 13 of the 16 infants looked longer
at the attractive stimulus and the preference foi
attractiveness was significant, Wilcoxon test, T
(16)= ll,/~<.OOS.
From the findings with all trials included, 7
of the 8 stimuli rated as attractive were looked
at for longer than the “unattractive” ones they
were paired with (the exception is stimulus
A4). and 6 of the 8 stimuli rated as unattractive
were looked at for less time than their “attrac-
tive” pairs (the exceptions are stimuli UIO and
U 13) (Table 2). This difference in looking time
between the attractive and unattractive stimuli
was significant. Mann-Whitney U test. I/ (N, =
N, = 8) = 3, 11 <.()()I. From the findings with
the “non-compared” trials removed (Table 3)
the stimulus preferences are slightly reduced
(i.e., move closer to 50%‘). but the difference in
looking times between attractive and unattrac-
tive stimuli is significant. Mann-Whitney IT
test, I/ (N, = N, = 8) = 9.5. p <.()I.
As was mentioned earlier, the face stimuli
differed in adulta’ ratings of attractiveness
from I .X (least attractive) to S.7 (most attrac-
tive). The correlation between adult attractive-
ness rating and infants’ prefei-em33 was
Ggnificant. Speariiian‘~ r./lo ( 16) = 0.726.
/’ < .005 1.
Newborns Prefer Affrdctive Face5 349

TABLE 1
Experiment 1: Infants’ preferences for attractive faces on paired-stimulus trials

Attrdcfiveness preference”

Noncornpdred
/flfdflt SW Age (hour6 All fridh removed** No. tndlr removed

1 F 124 68.5 64.0 1

2 F 119 86.0 62.8 5
3 M 89 48.2 48.2
4 M 38 72.3 55.7 3
5 M 1on 62.6 62.6
6 M 151 76.0 76.0
7 M 68 57.0 50.9 1
n F 23 74.0 65.3 2
‘I M no 72.6 70.2 4
IO F 119 46.4 57.2 .5
11 F 49 5 3.7 5 3 .7
12 F 50 37.0 49.3 L
13 M 21 40.1 45.Y
14 F 29 70.4 60.6
15 M 18 61.9 56.4
16 M 14 57.0 50.9
Mem 70 61 .5 ‘is.1 211
(SD) (42.2) (1 .3.Y) (8.41

TABLC 2
Experiment 1: Stimulus differences in percentage preferences for attractive (A) and unattractive (U) faces

Al i5.4 4’1.1 40.5 40.7

A2 .59.9 5n.4 50.0 5.3.8
A.1 67.6 55 ‘1 18.0 22.8
A4 45.6 1’9.1 57.2 55.0
A.5 62.0 53.8 $‘I.0 47.‘)
A6 77.6 71 .J 2.3.4 22.8
A7 61.2 61 .L 41 .(I 47.7
A8 62.4 66.6 .~7.8 46.0
M&In 61 ..5 56.9 .18.5 42.1
(SD) (8.6) (9.4) (I 1 .II) (11 .Y)

Facial Expression andStimulus
Two potentially confounding variables are
the facial expression displayed by the facial
stimuli and the contrast of the stimuli, both of
which are known to affect young infants’ pref-
erential looking (Nelson, 1987: Slater, 199.5).
Contrast While the experiment was not intended to
explore these variables in detail it is possible to
analyze the data to find if they had a confound-
ing effect on the measures of preferential look-
ing to attractiveness.
One possibility, for example, (pointed out
by a reviewer of this paper). is that if attractive
150
smiling faces had inadvertently been paired
more often with unattractive unsmiling faces.
preferences could have emerged due to smiling
rather than attractiveness. It was mentioned
above that each facial stimulus displayed one
of three expressions: ST, smiling showing
teeth; SC, smiling with lips closed; NE, neutral
expression. The infants were tested in 4 groups
of 4, and for each group the pairings of the 8
attractive stimuli with the 8 unattractive ones
were different, giving 32 different pairings in
all. For 14 of these pairings the expressions of
each member of the pair were matched (i.e.,
ST paired with [pw] ST, SC pw SC, NE pw
NE). For the 18 mismatched pairs the overall
average attractiveness preference was 62.8%
which is very similar to the attractiveness pref-
erence of 61.5% for all infants (Table 1). The
attractiveness preferences for the mismatched
pairs, with the attractive stimulus given first,
were as follows: (a) ST pw SC, N = 4, 63.6%;
(b) ST pw NE, N = 2,48.2; (c) SC pw ST, N =
6, 59.9%; (d) NE pw ST, N = 4, 67.4%; (e) NE
pw SC, N = 2, 75.2%. For purposes of statisti-
cal analysis the data for (a) and (b) were com-
bined. and also those for (d) and (e). A
Kruskall-Wallace one-way analysis of vari-
ance by ranks was nonsignificant, H (N, = N2
= N,= 6) = 0.8 1, p >.05. Thus, it appears that,
for this experiment, differences in facial
expression within pairings had no appreciable
effect on the attractiveness effect.
As mentioned above the facial stimuli
ranged in contrast from 50% to 75%. Three
adult observers rank ordered the stimuli from
most to least contrast. Four attractive and 4
unattractive stimuli were above average con-
trast and 4 of each were below average, so that
there was no systematic variation in contrast
between the two sets of stimuli. There was no
systematic effect of contrast on infants’ prefer-
ences (for the attractive stimuli rho (8) = 0.19,
and for the unattractive stimuli rho (8) = 0.20.
both ps >.05).
These findings suggest that newborn infants
will look longer at photographs of faces that
adults rate as attractive than photographs rated
as unattractive, and that the findings hold
INFANT BEHAVIOK & DEVELOPMENT Vol. 21, No. 2, 1908
across both participant and stimulus variations.
Additionally, the preference for attractive
stimuli was not confounded with preferences
for facial expression or for contrast. Thus, in
the present experiment. the “attractiveness
effect” is not caused by extreme scores of a
few participants, or strong preferences for just
a few of the stimuli, or by a preference for a
particular facial expression, or by the contrast
variations in the stimuli. These findings are
discussed after description of the next experi-
ment.
EXPERlMEN T 2
In Experiment I there were small variations in
the size and contrast of the stimuli, although
these differences did not differ significantly
between the attractive and unattractive stimuli
(see Samuels et al., 1994) and did not appear
to affect the preferences observed in Experi-
ment I. However, given that newborn infants
detect and respond to these stimulus variations
(Slater, 1995), Experiment 2 was carried out as
a partial replication of the first experiment
using facial pairings that were equated for size,
brightness and contrast.
Method
Participants and Stimuli
Nineteen newborn babies, 7 girls and 12
boys, between the ages of 18 and 129 hrs
(mean = 64 hrs) were the participants. The
stimuli were 12 computer print-outs of faces
taken from photographs of Caucasian
women’s faces, half chosen to be attractive and
half chosen to be unattractive, none of which
had been used in Experiment 1. As a confirma-
tion of the selections, the faces were judged by
10 adults on a 7-point scale of attractiveness,
with 7 being “very attractive:” 6 were judged
to be attractive (mean rating = 5.34, range
4.79-6.14) and 6 were judged to be unattrac-
tive (mean rating = 1.75, range 1.21-2.29). The
face pairs were matched for facial expression:
Newborns Prefer Attractive Faces
one pair were smiling with teeth showing, the
other faces all displayed neutral expressions.
The faces were put into 6 attractive/unat-
tractive pairs, the members of each pair
equated as closely as possible for size, bright-
ness, contrast, and hair style. In order to facil-
itate the matching the photographs were
digitally scanned into a PC using a videocam-
era and Core1 “photopaint” software. They
were then scaled and the contrast manipulated
to ensure that skin color was identical for each
member of a pair, and that each had similar
style, color and amount of hair. When appro-
priate matching was completed they were
printed. Pairs 1 through 4 were black and
white, and pairs 5 and 6 were color photo-
graphs. The photographs were full-face and
showed the faces from the crown of the head
to the jaw, and each photograph was 19 cm (+
0.5 cm) in height and 14 cm (+ 0.5 cm) in
width, subtending visual angles of 32O
(height) and 25” (width) at the viewing dis-
tance of 30 cm. The maximum contrast of
each pair was 60%, from hair color (dark) to
skin color.
Procedure and Design
Each infant was given a maximum of 6
paired-stimulus preferential looking trials,
each continuing until 20 s of looking had
accumulated. In order to minimize participant
loss the infants were not required to complete
all 6 trials, and testing continued until 12 sets
of data had been collected for each stimulus
pair. With this constraint, stimulus presenta-
tion was in a random order, with the left-right
positioning of attractive/unattractive stimuli
counterbalanced across infants and stimuli.
For 29 paired trials, from 9 infants, 2 indepen-
dent observers recorded looking (EB was
always one observer and two others acted as
second observer), and the interobserver agree-
ment was high, r (27) = 0.881, p <.OOl).
Other details of testing are as described for
Experiment 1.
351
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
For each of the 6 attractive/unattractive pair-
ings there were data for 12 trials, giving 72 tri-
als in all. For 61 of these trials the infants
looked at both stimuli of the pair, while the
other 11 trials were “non-compared’ in that the
infants looked only at one stimulus of the pair.
The results are analyzed with and without the
“non-compared’ trials included. In the next
two paragraphs the attractiveness preferences
of the individual infants are presented, fol-
lowed by the preferences for the different stim-
ulus pairs.
From the findings with all trials included,
15 of the 19 infants looked longer at the attrac-
tive than at the unattractive faces (Table 3).
Each infant’s score was represented as the per-
centage of the total looking time spent viewing
the attractive faces: the mean was 67.9% (SD =
16.5) and this preference for attractiveness was
significant, Wilcoxon test, T (19) = 16, p
c.005. The number of trials completed by the
infants ranged from 1 to 6, and there was a sig-
nificant correlation between number of trials
completed and attractiveness preference, rho
(19) = -0.639, p c.01, one-tailed, indicating
that those infants who completed fewer trials
gave the strongest attractiveness preference:
this finding is most readily interpreted as
habituation over trials to the variables of
attractive/unattractive for the longer looking
infants.
From the findings with the 11 “non-com-
pared’ trials removed 14 of 18 infants looked
longer at the attractive stimulus (Table 3): the
mean attractiveness preference of 61.8% (SD =
17.1) was significant, Wilcoxon test, T (18) =
31,p <.Ol.
The percentage of time spent looking at the
attractive member of the stimulus pairs aver-
aged 64.3% (range 50.9 to 78.9) with all trials
included, and 60.3% (range 50.9 to 68.3) with
the “non-compared’ trials removed (Table 4).
Thus, for all six stimulus pairs the attractive
face attracted more looking than the unattrac-
tive one. For both “all trials” and “non-com-
pared removed” conditions the difference in
 3.52 INFANT IJEHAVIOR XI DEVELOPMENT Vol. 21, No. 2, lYYt<

Experiment 2: Infants’ preferences for attractive faces on paired-stimulus trials

12’1 411.9 i8.7 1

1 II tIo.0 70.0 1
60 86.0 8 I ..3 1
101 f16..5 Ti’i.3 1
43 42.0 GL .o
101 61 .tl 61 .II
44 100.0 2
8 104 8.3.8 8’1.8
‘1 23 62.3 24.7 3
10 111 fh.‘, 66.5
11 31 67.0 50.5 1
IL 126 64.8 57.13 1
1 .3 T; 2 114.8 84.8
14 60 if, 6 if,.6
15 32 36.‘) If,.‘)
10 OH 4Y.8 4’J.H
17 51 85.0 8.5.0
18 50 7 I ..3 71 ..<
1Y ‘38 7i.5 7i i
MWfl 6.3.8 07.‘) 01 .ti
(SD) (3’3.0) (IO.‘,) (17.11

TABLE 4
Experiment 2: Percentage preferences for attractive member of the facial pairings

1 78.‘) 60.3
2 50.8 52.8
JJ 611.7 62.4
4 50.9 50.9
5 60. i fIfI.2
0 64.2 61 .O
Mrm 04. I GO.3
(SD) (8.‘)) (6.4)

looking time was significant, Wilcoxon test, T can discriminate attractive from unattractive
(6) = 0, p 425. faces and that, like older infants, they prefer
attractive faces. A frequently expressed inter-
pretation of the attractiveness effect in oldel
GENERAL DISCUSSION infants is in terms of prototype formation and a
cognitive averaging process. When faces are
The findings from these two studies show that computer-averaged the resulting prototype is
newborn infants, less than a week from birth, typically seen as more attractive than the indi-
Newborns Prefer Attrdctive Faces
vidual faces that are averaged together and,
therefore, averageness has been claimed to be
an important ingredient of attractiveness (Lan-
glois & Roggman, 1990). According to this
interpretation attractive faces are seen as more
“face-like” because they match more closely
the prototype that infants have formed from
their experience of seeing faces. As was men-
tioned earlier, it is known that newborn infants
can form prototypes of faces they have seen in
the laboratory in less than one minute (Walton
& Bower, 1993) and that they recognise a
learned face over transformations (Walton et
al., 1997). One interpretation of the present
findings, therefore, is that the newborns’ pref-
erence for attractive faces is a preference for an
image similar to a composite of the faces they
have seen in the few hours from birth prior to
testing: thus, “Infants may prefer attractive or
prototypical faces because prototypes are eas-
ier to classify as a face” (Langlois & Rog-
gmann, 1990, p. 119).
An alternative interpretation of the find-
ings is in terms of an innate perceptual mech-
anism that detects and responds specifically to
faces. According to this interpretation the
newborns look more at the attractive faces
because they match most closely the innately
provided face template. Several authors have
speculated that infants may be born with an
innate built-in specification of the face, or
face module (e.g., Johnson & Morton, 1991;
Meltzoff, 1995; Walton, et al., 1997) and
Langlois and Roggman (1990) discuss the
possibility of an innate account for attractive-
ness preferences.
The results from these studies do not allow
us to rule out either of these alternative inter-
pretations. We do not know precisely what fea-
tures, or combination of features, the newborns
(or the older infants of other studies) were
using in order to make their preferential
choices. Nevertheless, the findings strongly
suggest that preferences for attractive faces are
present soon after birth, and are not the result
of a long period of observing faces.
353
Acknowledgments: This research was sup-
ported by Grant R000235288 from the Eco-
nomic and Social Research Council to the first
author. We are indebted to the staff of the
Maternity Ward, Royal Devon and Exeter
Hospital, Heavitree, Exeter, for their support,
and thank Claire Brummitt who assisted in the
data collection.
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