Perceived Health Cues in Faces: What Skin Color, Evenness and Sleep Studies Found

Facial analysis is not only about shape. A set of experiments looks at cues that move on a timescale of days or weeks: skin color, how even the skin looks, and how rested someone is. This article reports what those studies found, in their own samples, and where Selfbaus does and does not measure anything related.

Skin color distribution and evenness

Fink, Grammer and Matts (2006) built shape-standardized stimulus faces that differed only in skin color distribution, reflecting variation with biological age and cumulative photodamage. A panel of naive judges rated them. Faces with the homogeneous color distribution typical of younger people were perceived as younger and received higher attractiveness and health ratings than faces with the less homogeneous distribution typical of older people. The stimuli were female faces. Matts, Fink, Grammer and Burquest (2007, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology) used cropped cheek skin images from 170 girls and women aged 11 to 76, blind-rated for attractiveness, healthiness, youthfulness and age by 353 participants. Color homogeneity correlated positively with perceived attractiveness, healthiness and youthfulness (all r above 0.40) and negatively with estimated age. The authors list as a limitation that only female skin was studied.

What this does and does not say: the manipulated cue was color distribution on computer-built faces. It does not test any product or routine, and it does not tell you what your own skin looks like to others.

Redness, yellowness and diet

Stephen, Law Smith, Stirrat and Perrett had participants adjust the skin color of color-calibrated Caucasian face photographs to look healthier. Participants increased redness, yellowness and lightness. The authors link this to blood color and to carotenoid and melanin coloration.

Whitehead and colleagues (2012) recorded diet and skin color in 35 people at baseline, three and six weeks, excluding people with makeup, self-tanner or recent intensive UV exposure. Six-week changes in fruit and vegetable intake correlated with changes in skin redness and yellowness. That is a small sample and a correlation across individuals' changes. It does not establish how much any change would matter to an observer, and it is not advice to tan or seek UV.

Sleep

Axelsson and colleagues (2010) photographed 23 healthy adults aged 18 to 31 after a normal night (8 hours) and after sleep deprivation (31 hours awake after a night of reduced sleep). Sixty-five untrained observers rated the photos. Sleep-deprived faces were rated less healthy (63 vs 68 on a 100 mm scale), more tired (53 vs 44) and less attractive (38 vs 40). The attractiveness difference is small and the deprivation was acute, so the study does not show that sleeping more than usual improves appearance.

What Selfbaus measures

Nothing here. Selfbaus does not detect skin color, evenness, tiredness or sleep from your photo, and it does not rate health. Our face measurements are geometric and descriptive. If you pick routines (see the routines article), you pick them yourself, and the plan reflects your choices.

References

• Fink, B., Grammer, K., & Matts, P. J. (2006). Visible skin color distribution plays a role in the perception of age, attractiveness, and health in female faces. Evolution and Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2006.08.007
• Matts, P. J., Fink, B., Grammer, K., & Burquest, M. (2007). Color homogeneity and visual perception of age, health, and attractiveness of female facial skin. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2007.07.040
• Stephen, I. D., Law Smith, M. J., Stirrat, M. R., & Perrett, D. I. Facial skin coloration affects perceived health of human faces. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2780675/
• Whitehead, R. D., Re, D., Xiao, D., Ozakinci, G., & Perrett, D. I. (2012). You are what you eat: within-subject increases in fruit and vegetable consumption confer beneficial skin-color changes. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032988
• Axelsson, J., et al. (2010). Beauty sleep: experimental study on the perceived health and attractiveness of sleep deprived people. BMJ, 341, c6614. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c6614