Abstract:
Previous work showed high agreement in facial attractiveness preferences within and across cultures. The aims of the
current study were twofold. First, we tested cross-cultural agreement in the attractiveness judgements of White Scottish and
Black South African students for own- and other-ethnicity faces. Results showed significant agreement between White
Scottish and Black South African observers’ attractiveness judgements, providing further evidence of strong cross-cultural
agreement in facial attractiveness preferences. Second, we tested whether cross-cultural agreement is influenced by the
ethnicity and/or the gender of the target group. White Scottish and Black South African observers showed significantly
higher agreement for Scottish than for African faces, presumably because both groups are familiar with White European
facial features, but the Scottish group are less familiar with Black African facial features. Further work investigating this
discordance in cross-cultural attractiveness preferences for African faces show that Black South African observers rely more
heavily on colour cues when judging African female faces for attractiveness, while White Scottish observers rely more
heavily on shape cues. Results also show higher cross-cultural agreement for female, compared to male faces, albeit not
significantly higher. The findings shed new light on the factors that influence cross-cultural agreement in attractiveness
preferences.
