ERP Evidence for Cross-Modal Effects on Attractiveness Perception

Highlights What are the main findings? • Audiovisual presentation of faces and voices facilitated attractiveness judgments compared with unimodal voice presentation.• ERP results revealed that cross-modal attractiveness congruency modulated neural processing at both early perceptual (N1) and later evaluative (P3) stages. What are the implications of the main findings? • The findings demonstrate how facial information influences the neural processing of vocal attractiveness during multisensory social perception.• This study provides electrophysiological evidence for the temporal dynamics of audiovisual integration in attractiveness evaluation. Abstract Background: Attractiveness plays an important role in social interactions. However, it remains unclear whether presenting attractiveness information across multiple sensory modalities facilitates attractiveness evaluation, and how cross-modal congruency modulates this process. Methods: The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate these questions. Participants judged the attractiveness of voices presented alone or paired with faces that were congruent or incongruent in attractiveness. Results: Significant differences were found between unimodal and audiovisual conditions, as well as between congruent and incongruent pairs, during both early perceptual (N1) and later evaluative (P3) stages. Both audiovisual conditions elicited larger N1 amplitudes than the auditory-only condition, and congruent pairs produced larger N1 amplitudes than incongruent pairs. At a later stage, the auditory-only condition produced larger P3 amplitudes than the audiovisual conditions. Furthermore, the interaction between voice attractiveness and visual context on P3 amplitudes was significant. Audiovisual incongruent pairs elicited larger P3 amplitudes than congruent pairs, but only when the voice was unattractive. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that redundant visual cues of attractiveness both accelerate and alter the perception of auditory attractiveness. These audiovisual integration effects occur across different processing stages and may reflect enhanced processing efficiency in multisensory social perception.