The attractiveness of a person, a complex, and socially relevant type of information, is transmitted in many ways, not least through face and voice. However, it is unclear how the stimulus domains carrying attractiveness information interact. The present study explored the audiovisual perception of attractiveness in a Stroop-like paradigm using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were presented with face-voice pairs carrying congruent or incongruent attractiveness information and, in turn, judged the attractiveness level of each domain while ignoring the other. Voice attractiveness judgments were influenced by unattended face attractiveness, in terms of both, early perceptual encoding (N170, P200) as well as later evaluative stages (N400, LPC). In contrast, effects of unattended voice attractiveness on face attractiveness judgments were confined to early perceptual encoding (N170). These results demonstrate not only the interaction of multiple domains in human attractiveness perception at different processing stages but also a relative dominance of face over voice attractiveness.

Individuals appear to infer others\' psychological characteristics according to facial attractiveness and these psychological characteristics can be classified into two categories in social cognition, that is, warmth and competence. However, which category of psychological characteristic is more associated with face attractiveness and its neural mechanisms have not been explored. To address this, participants were asked to judge others\' warmth and competence traits based on face attractiveness, while their brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They also assessed the attractiveness of faces after scanning. Behavioral results showed that the correlation between face attractiveness and warmth ratings was significantly higher than that with competence ratings. fMRI results demonstrated that the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), temporoparietal junction (TPJ), lateral prefrontal cortex, and lateral temporal lobe were more involved in the warmth task. Moreover, attractiveness ratings were negatively correlated with activation of the dmPFC and TPJ only in the warmth task. Furthermore, the attractiveness ratings were negatively correlated with the defined dmPFC, region related to attractiveness judgment, only in the warmth task. In conclusion, people are more inclined to infer others\' warmth than competence characteristics from face attractiveness, that is, face attractiveness is more associated with warmth than with competence.

Evolutionary theories suggest that fundamental mating-related motives might exert specific effects on human cognition and behaviors. Based on the evolutionary perspective, our prior research illustrated that the activation of mating-related motives leads to a study-time allocation bias toward highly attractive female faces. While study-time allocation is one of the aspects of the self-regulated learning process, it is unclear whether mating motives affect study decision behaviors (as measured by item-selection orders) during the learning process. Therefore, the present study followed the logic of previous research and aimed to examine the effects of mating-related motives on item-selection orders for face-name associations among faces with varying attractiveness. In two experiments, after an imagery procedure, participants in mating-related priming conditions (Experiment 1: mate search, Experiment 2: mate guarding) or control conditions performed an item-selection task. Participants were shown 16 female faces with varying attractiveness on a computer screen and were instructed to decide the order for studying the faces and corresponding names. Experiment 1 showed that activating mate-search motives led male participants to prioritize the choice of highly attractive rather than less attractive faces for studying. In Experiment 2, compared to the participants in the control condition, female participants in the mate-guarding priming condition were more likely to prioritize the choice of highly attractive rather than less attractive faces for studying. The present findings clarify that mating-related motives affect the item-selection prioritization of faces with varying attractiveness.