Influence of facial attractiveness on the allocation of attentional resources: Moderating effect of evolutionary motivations

: Improving facial attractiveness does help to attract attentional resources. However, the specific mechanisms how facial attractiveness affects the allocation of attentional resources remain unclear. The present study tries to investigate the effects of facial attractiveness on two types of processes: attention adhesion and attention capture. Attention adhesion refers to the difficulty of shifting attention away from the target, whereas attention capture refers to the process of the initial orientation of attention toward the target. The present study will use different visual search paradigms to measure the effects of facial attractiveness on these two different attentional processes. In particular, the current study will also distinguish top-down and bottom-up attention capture. In addition, because of the evolutionary significance of facial attractiveness, this study will test the effects of facial attractiveness on the allocation of attentional resources when different motivational states (i.e., mating motivation and self-protection motivation) are activated.