This Article Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Halberstadt, J. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Halberstadt, J. Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

The Generality and Ultimate Origins of the Attractiveness of Prototypes

Department of Psychology, University of Otago

The relationship between category structure and affect, a core question about the affect-cognition interface, has been largely ignored by both literatures, with the exception of studies on the attractiveness of computer-averaged faces. This article reviews a number of the authors' recent and unpublished studies that demonstrate a robust positive correlation between prototypicality and attractiveness across diverse categories, and that systematically explore several hypotheses about the ultimate, that is, evolutionary, origins of this bias. A tentative dual-origin explanation is offered, in which prototypes of animal categories are preferred as a generalization of a mate-selection adaptation designed for human faces; coincidentally prototypes of artifacts (and possibly natural, nonanimal categories) are preferred by virtue of their subjective familiarity.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?

This article has been cited by other articles:

				R. E. Engeszer, G. Wang, M. J. Ryan, and D. M. Parichy Sex-specific perceptual spaces for a vertebrate basal social aggregative behavior PNAS, January 22, 2008; 105(3): 929 - 933. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]