Facial perception and eyeliner: an exploratory study of attractiveness and sex differences

Tegan's final year research project

MPsych (Hons) Psychology student Tegan shares details on her final year research project into the potency of eyeliner on facial perception.

? Aim of the research

To explore the effect of eyeliner based on colour, length and gender on perceived facial attractiveness.

Undertaking the research

The participants were first sent a brief of what the research was, once consenting to take part and answering the demographic questions, participants answered the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease on a self report scale which is a 15 question survey aimed at measuring how each participant perceives their infectability and germ aversion as many previous studies have found links between health and beauty/attractiveness.

Next in the questionnaire is a 10 item Personality Measure to assess how participants rate their personality traits with 5 2-item subscales that determine where in the domains of a five-factor model of personality (Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism) they are.

Once all of these questionnaires had been completed, the participants are met with a display screen that provides them with the instructions for the main questionnaire based on attractiveness. This part they will rate the attractiveness of 70 men and women on a scale of 1 (extremely unattractive) to 7 (extremely attractive). The order the images come through to the participants are all randomised, from female, male and varying lengths of blue, black or no eyeliner.

The images the participants see of the men and women wearing eyelines are in fact just several different version images of 5 men and 5 women (10 people in total) For every neutral image of the 10 selected men and women there are 6 individually photoshopped versions that differ in eyeliner length (length 0, length 1 and length 2) and colour (black and blue)

Findings of the research

So far, based on data gathered from undergraduate psychology students that signed up to participate in my online study I have found:

The images of women wearing eyeliner were rated as more attractive than the images of men wearing eyeliner.
Regardless of length and gender, black eyeliner was preferred over blue, resulting in significantly higher attractiveness ratings.
Bigger is not always better - the longest length of eyeliner (Length 2) was not the more preferred, and neither was the shortest (length 0), but rather the most popular was Length 1 which is a small to medium sized eyeliner wings.

Getting the opportunity to conduct your own research in your final year of study is exciting because you get to further nurture a small spark on an idea, into something bigger. It enables you to think as a psychologist, researcher, clinical psychologist and so on. I was able to shake off the imposter syndrome and experience what it is like to contribute to psychology research by doing something that potentially hasn't been explored and that I am truly interested in enough to research. Overall, I get to choose how I kick-start my career in psychology research.

Resources that supported my research

I mainly used online resources that were provided by the university to undertake my research, I used Limesurvey to create my study questionnaire, the online library for literature reviews and the SONA system and Prolific to recruit both students and public participants.

The online materials that the School of Psychology provides us enables us students to construct the foundations of our research projects which in turns allows us to gain transferable skills that will be of use in our future careers in psychology.