Face is beautiful: Aesthetic evaluation of pareidolian faces

The present study investigated the relation between the face-likeness of pareidolian faces and aesthetic evaluations of them. The pareidolian faces consisted of a facial contour, left and right eyes, and a mouth. Positions of the facial parts were randomly determined. In the experiment, participants were asked to evaluate the face-likeness, beautifulness, and uncanniness of the pareidolian face stimuli. The results suggested that the face-likeness and beautifulness correlated positively, while the face-likeness and uncanniness correlated negatively. Thus, face-likeness of pareidolian faces would have positive influence on the aesthetic evaluation of them. However, detail analyses regarding the eye positions revealed that the faces with outer-side eyes were rated as more beautiful than the faces with inner-side eyes, while the face-likeness of the faces with inner-side and outer-side eyes were comparable. Thus, the facial configuration, in particular eye positions, would differently influence the face-likeness and the beautifulness. These results implied that the higher face-likeness led to the more beautifulness, yet the underpinning processes of the face-likeness perception and the beautifulness perception might be partly separable.