Context-Specific Responses to Self-Resembling Faces

This chapter details the methodological issues surrounding the experimental study of human facial resemblance and reviews experimental evidence from studies using such methods. Facial resemblance was found to increase prosocial behavior and attributions consistent with the kinds of contexts in which favoring kin would have been adaptive. Resemblance had a less positive effect on the general attractiveness of opposite-sex faces than same-sex faces and had a detrimental effect on judgments of sexual attractiveness, consistent with inbreeding avoidance. Facial resemblance was shown to increase preferences for child faces and may do so more for men than women. Additionally, preferences for self-resemblance are sensitive to cyclic hormone changes, with selfresemblance being preferred more during the luteal phase than during the fertile late follicular phase, especially in female faces.