Currently, the "eyeball economy" is developing rapidly. Facial attractiveness plays an important role in social transactions and the labor market. Biases in favor of attractive faces have been documented in research on attention, memory and other cognitive processes. Many researchers have investigated the influence of facial attractiveness on economic decision-making in recent years. Previous studies have shown that people make different decisions about attractive partners than about unattractive partners. However, the effect of facial attractiveness has been inconsistent across different studies. A large number of studies have confirmed the beauty premium effect such that people show preferences for attractive faces, while other research has revealed the beauty penalty or ugliness premium effect. Three different explanations have been proposed for the effect of facial attractiveness on decision-making, including explanations by economists, explanations by social psychologists, and evolutionary explanations. Economists developed a taste-based discrimination model and a statistical discrimination model. The former assumes that people prefer attractive faces regardless of their personality traits or behavioral performance, while the latter suggests that good-looking people usually perform better at their work and have a greater ability to negotiate higher wages with their employers. Like what the statistical discrimination model proposes, social psychologists suggest that attractive individuals often have more positive traits, that is, the "beauty is good" stereotype. For example, good-looking individuals are perceived as friendlier, more generous, more trustworthy, more competent, etc. However, explanations by economists and social psychologists are descriptive and indirect. Both of these explanations ignore the impact of sex on the bias toward facial attractiveness. Evolutionary explanations propose a more direct and comprehensive perspective that the bias of facial attractiveness in economic decision-making occurs because of the genetic and mating value of attractiveness. A beautiful appearance is usually a sign of good genes, which represents high mate value. The theory also offers possible explanations for the different decisions made toward same-sex versus opposite-sex attractive individuals (i.e., intrasexual competition versus intersexual selection). Although the explanations from different disciplines reflect a difference between levels of analyses and mechanisms, they do not completely conflict with each other. These factors are compatible with each other in explaining the bias of facial attractiveness when predicting the phenomenon of beauty premiums without considering sex. However, the evolutionary explanation provides a more comprehensive hypothesis for the greater effect of opposite-sex facial attractiveness on decision-making than that of same-sex faces. Nonetheless, the influence of facial attractiveness on economic decision-making is complex and multifaceted; therefore, it can be fully understood only by considering and integrating multiple perspectives, which are difficult to explain through the use of a single theoretical system. Electrophysiological studies have further revealed the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness and the perception of fairness and risk during decision-making and revealed that attractive faces induce a greater late positive component and activate brain regions related to reward processing, such as the nucleus accumbens, orbital frontal cortex, and ventral striatum. Although cognitive neuroscience studies have demonstrated the neurobiological mechanisms by which facial attractiveness affects economic decision-making, they do not provide strong evidence for the above three theoretical explanations because psychological factors such as preferences, stereotypes, and mating motives were not measured. Future research should investigate the interaction of multimodal attractiveness information such as voice and smell information in real economic decision-making situations, integrate electrophysiological studies with the existing theoretical system to comprehensively understand the underlying neural mechanism, and establish a comprehensive and systematic theoretical model to provide a theoretical basis for controlling appearance bias in the labor market and other social transactions.

面孔吸引力影响人类的经济决策,人们对高吸引力和低吸引力博弈对象的决策不同.大量研究报告美貌溢价效应,另一些研究则发现美貌惩罚效应.前人提出经济学、社会心理学和进化心理学3个取向来解释面孔吸引力影响决策的原因.经济学取向和社会心理学取向都只提供了描述性解释,忽略了性别的作用.进化心理学取向则提出更深层次的解释,认为人类对高吸引力面孔的偏好主要受到择偶动机的驱使,且人们更偏爱高吸引力的异性.虽然这3个理论体系的解释层级不同,但并不互斥,它们在预测不存在性别差异的美貌溢价现象时有共同的解释力.电生理研究进一步从决策过程中面孔吸引力的认知加工和对公平以及风险的感知的影响方面揭示面孔吸引力影响经济决策的神经生物学机制,发现高吸引力面孔在决策过程中能诱发较大的晚期正成分,并激活伏隔核、眶额叶皮层、腹侧纹状体等与奖赏加工有关的脑区.未来研究应探究真实经济决策情境中,面孔与嗓音、气味等多通道吸引力的交互作用,建立不同面孔吸引力水平的动态连续变化模型,并将电生理研究与现有理论体系整合,全面阐释吸引力影响经济决策的神经机制,并充分挖掘面孔吸引力影响决策的中介变量和调节变量,为控制招聘等活动中的外貌偏见提供理论依据.

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