Anova Analysis and the Perception of Faces

Anova Analysis and the Perception of Faces

Name:

Instructor:

Course:

Date Submitted:

Abstract

Our perceptions of beauty and attractiveness is hugely influenced by many factors in life ranging from both biological make up like the brain components and environment factors such as age, social and cultural values and attitudes. One way ANOVA is a research technique that uses statistics to analyze the variations of two or more components, though it is only effective in analyzing number data. Moreover, it is mostly applicable in testing null hypothesis population samples excerpted from same population.

The aim of this study is to see if process orientation (global or local) influences how we perceive attraction in faces; it also assesses collecting data that will allow us to complete a one way analysis of variance. It is based on an experiment carried out on a group of participants' choice of photos to determine they their perception of what is considered to be attractive features. The three levels of ANOVA analysis was used to compare the local, global and control group against the participants' ratings of attractiveness. This allowed for the mean perceived attractiveness of stimuli faces to be compared, with later post-hoc tests to analyze the probability of the accuracy of the data. The results reveals that global conditions gave overall higher ratings of attractiveness than local stimuli

Introduction

From time immemorial, humanity has always been preoccupied with finding or cultivating physical attractive ness and beauty is portrayed through facial appearance, body features and personality. However, as indicated in an old English saying, beauty is the beholder's eyes clearly show that the notion of beauty is subject to cultural and individual interpretation (Rhodes 2006). Our perceptions and preferences of beautiful and attractive are shaped by our own gender and cultural values based on what hear and see right from our early childhood years. Our cultural interpretations and perceptions about beauty and facial attractive have been reinforced by the media's projection of beauty and attractiveness. According to Englis et al (1994) the “two most forms of mass media that play an important role in transmitting information about multiple and diverse cultural ideals of beauty are fashion magazine advertising and music videos shown on television”. The media's reinforces some of these dominant concepts of beauty by portraying photo images of both male and women shown in the nanova photos in appendix 1.

Cunningham et al. (1995) measured the consistency of rating of photos of female faces, and found that there was a significant correlation between the white American and recently arrived Hispanic and Asian participants. Cunningham et al. (1995) also found a significant correlation between the groups when black and white males were asked to rate the attractiveness of black females based on photographs. Despite these findings that show evidence for perception of attractiveness remaining consistent across culturally different groups, other individual factors can affect our perceptions.

Even height of the observer has been shown to play a factor in what facial features are found to be attractive (Geldart, ...