ReviewFrontiers in psychology2018
Facial Adiposity, Attractiveness, and Health: A Review.
Review in Frontiers in psychology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Influence of body mass index on perceived lower facial asymmetry.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The evaluation of facial features as markers of cardiometabolic health in women of post-reproductive age.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2026Article
- Rethinking the bodily self: evidence from the enfacement illusion in women at risk for eating disorders.Journal of eating disorders · 2025Article
- Facial Appearance and Markers of Cardiometabolic Risk in Healthy Adult Men.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- Does Identifying with Another Face Alter Body Image Disturbance in Women with an Eating Disorder? An Enfacement Illusion Study.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Mate assessment based on physical characteristics: a review and reflection.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Is the human face a biomarker of health? - A scoping review.PloS one · 2025Article
- Congruence in European and Asian perception of Vietnamese facial attractiveness, averageness, symmetry and sexual dimorphism.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The Great Porn Experiment V2.0: Sexual Arousal Reduces the Salience of Familiar Women When Heterosexual Men Judge Their Attractiveness.Archives of sexual behavior · 2022Article
- Use of Facial Morphology to Determine Nutritional Status in Older Adults: Opportunities and Challenges.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2022Article
- Facial Anthropometry Measurements Using Three-Dimensional Stereophotogrammetry Analysis Among Nigerians.The Journal of craniofacial surgery · 2022Article
- 'When hunger makes everything better looking!': The effect of hunger on the aesthetic appreciation of human bodies, faces and objects.BMC psychology · 2022Article
- Ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity differentiates sick from healthy faces: Associations with inflammatory responses and disease avoidance motivation.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2022Article
- Unattractive faces are more attractive when the bottom-half is masked, an effect that reverses when the top-half is concealed.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2022Article
- Olfaction in the Multisensory Processing of Faces: A Narrative Review of the Influence of Human Body Odors.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Article
- Do 3D Face Images Capture Cues of Strength, Weight, and Height Better than 2D Face Images do?Adaptive human behavior and physiology · 2021Article
- Social Perception of Faces: Brain Imaging and Subjective Ratings.Brain sciences · 2020Article
- Shifts in Female Facial Attractiveness during Pregnancy.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2020Article
- Identification of the Facial Features of Patients With Cancer: A Deep Learning-Based Pilot Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The relationship between facial cues and perceptions of health and attractiveness in others plays an influential role in our social interactions and mating behaviors. Several facial cues have historically been investigated in this regard, with facial adiposity being the newest addition. Evidence is mounting that a robust link exists between facial adiposity and attractiveness, as well as perceived health. Facial adiposity has also been linked to various health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, blood pressure, immune function, diabetes, arthritis, oxidative stress, hormones, and mental health. Though recent advances in the analysis of facial morphology has led to significant strides in the description and quantification of facial cues, it is becoming increasingly clear that there is a great deal of nuance in the way that humans use and integrate facial cues to form coherent social or health judgments of others. This paper serves as a review of the current literature on the relationship between facial adiposity, attractiveness, and health. A key component in utilizing facial adiposity as a cue to health and attractiveness perceptions is that people need to be able to estimate body mass from facial cues. To estimate the strength of the relationship between perceived facial adiposity and body mass, a meta-analysis was conducted on studies that quantified the relationship between perceived facial adiposity and BMI/percentage body fat. Summary effect size estimates indicate that participants could reliably estimate BMI from facial cues alone (
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.