Abstract
Apart from morphological differences, male and female faces also vary in color, especially in overall lightness and facial contrast, i.e., the contrast between the luminance and color of facial features (eyes, lips, or brows) and luminance and color of the surrounding skin. In many populations, it has been demonstrated that women tend to be lighter than men. Other differences were found in facial contrast: women have a higher contrast between the lightness of their eyes and lips and the surrounding skin. Manipulation of this contrast in an artificial genderless face can result in a masculine or feminine appearance. So far, however, this phenomenon has been studied mostly in Euro-American and East Asian samples, with little evidence from populations with darker facial tone. We explored natural sexual dimorphism in both facial contrast and lightness in an African, namely Cameroonian, sample, and compared it with results for a European, in particular Czech, population. Our findings showed that sexual differences in luminance contrast of eyes and brows were in both studied populations similar but in the Cameroonian sample, significant difference in lips contrast was absent. These results indicate that sex differences in facial contrast are a side effect of the sex differences in skin color and can be used as a proxy for skin color perception.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the Czech Science Foundation, Grant No.: GA18-10298S. We wish to thank Anna Pilátová for English proof-reading. We thank Robert Mbe Akoko and Tomáš Kočnar for their assistance with the acquisition of facial photographs. We also thank all participants for their kind help and will to participate in this study.
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SP wrote the initial draft of the manuscript; SP and KK collected data in studied populations; SP provided data analyses and designed the figures. Both authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.
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This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. All procedures mentioned and followed were approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Science of Charles University (Protocol Ref. No. 06/2017). This study does not include information or images that could lead to the identification of a study participant. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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Pokorný, Š., Kleisner, K. Sexual Dimorphism in Facial Contrast: A Case from Central Africa. Arch Sex Behav 50, 3687–3694 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-01942-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-01942-9