Cosmetic makeup enhances facial attractiveness and affective neural responses

Abstract

Although it is well established that cosmetic makeup enhances perceived facial attractiveness, few studies have examined whether facial makeup modulates neural responses to face images. This study investigated behavioral and attractiveness-related brain responses to self-applied makeup, focusing on the N170, early posterior negativity, P300, and late positive potential components of event-related brain potentials. A total of 77 Japanese women participated in two experiments (N = 34 and 43 for Experiments 1 and 2, respectively). Experiment 1 assessed the effects of self-applied makeup on attractiveness-related event-related potential amplitudes using facial images during a makeup identification task in which makeup was directly relevant to task demands. Experiment 2 examined the effects of self-applied makeup using images of one’s own face and another female’s face when performing a gender classification task, where the presence of makeup had no explicit connection to facial gender classification. In both experiments, faces with makeup were rated as more attractive and elicited more negative early posterior negativity and more positive late positive potential components, regardless of the participant’s own face or another person’s face. These findings suggest that people are spontaneously motivated to pay visual attention to faces with makeup, which supports the idea that makeup adds reward value to the facial appearance of the human. Moreover, neural evidence empirically confirmed that the benefits of makeup are not just limited to how others see your face but also extend to how you see your own face.