Mental Health

Men More Tolerant of Unfairness from Pretty Faces

By Christine Hsu | Update Date: Jul 10, 2015 08:46 PM EDT

Men are more likely tolerate unfairness from attractive women, according to a new study.

In "The undermining effect of facial attractiveness on brain responses to fairness in the Ultimatum Game: an ERP study," male participants looked at pictures of 'attractive and unattractive' female faces, each proposing how to split ¥10 between herself and the male participant.

Researchers said the point of the study was to observe "the time course of the neural processing of facial attractiveness and its influence on fairness consideration during social interactions," according to The Independent.

"To summarize, the "beauty premium" influenced responder fairness during the Ultimate Game. Unfair offers from attractive female allocators were more acceptable to the male subjects, and the males presented with fluctuating reaction times to the five offers in comparison with a stable reaction pattern in the unattractive-face condition," researchers wrote.

"The event-related potentials data supported the behavioral findings. In the early feedback-related negativity (FRN) and late stages of outcome evaluation, the subjects' fairness consideration was undermined by the "beauty premium," which resulted in null FRN effects in the attractive-face condition. Additionally, the time course of brain responses to facial attractiveness illustrated that attractive faces elicited a decreased early negativity and an enhanced late positive potential compared with unattractive faces," they concluded.

The findings are published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

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