Objectives

A large literature exists investigating the extent to which physical characteristics (e.g., strength, weight, and height) can be accurately assessed from face images. While most of these studies have employed two-dimensional (2D) face images as stimuli, some recent studies have used three-dimensional (3D) face images because they may contain cues not visible in 2D face images. As equipment required for 3D face images is considerably more expensive than that required for 2D face images, we here investigated how perceptual ratings of physical characteristics from 2D and 3D face images compare.

Methods

We tested whether 3D face images capture cues of strength, weight, and height better than 2D face images do by directly comparing the accuracy of strength, weight, and height ratings of 182 2D and 3D face images taken simultaneously. Strength, height and weight were rated by 66, 59 and 52 raters respectively, who viewed both 2D and 3D images.

Results

In line with previous studies, we found that weight and height can be judged somewhat accurately from faces; contrary to previous research, we found that people were relatively inaccurate at assessing strength. We found no evidence that physical characteristics could be judged more accurately from 3D than 2D images.

Conclusion

Our results suggest physical characteristics are perceived with similar accuracy from 2D and 3D face images. They also suggest that the substantial costs associated with collecting 3D face scans may not be justified for research on the accuracy of facial judgments of physical characteristics.

中文翻译：

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3D 人脸图像是否比 2D 人脸图像更能捕捉力量、体重和身高的线索？

目标

大量文献研究了从面部图像中可以准确评估身体特征（例如，力量、体重和身高）的程度。虽然这些研究中的大多数都使用二维 (2D) 人脸图像作为刺激，但最近的一些研究使用了三维 (3D) 人脸图像，因为它们可能包含在 2D 人脸图像中不可见的线索。由于 3D 人脸图像所需的设备比 2D 人脸图像所需的设备昂贵得多，我们在这里研究了 2D 和 3D 人脸图像对物理特征的感知评级如何比较。

方法

我们通过直接比较同时拍摄的 182 张 2D 和 3D 人脸图像的强度、体重和身高评级的准确性，测试了 3D 人脸图像是否比 2D 人脸图像更好地捕捉到力量、体重和身高的线索。力量、身高和体重分别由 66、59 和 52 名评分者进行评分，他们同时查看了 2D 和 3D 图像。

结果

与之前的研究一致，我们发现可以从面部准确地判断体重和身高；与之前的研究相反，我们发现人们在评估力量方面相对不准确。我们没有发现任何证据表明从 3D 图像比 2D 图像可以更准确地判断物理特征。

结论

我们的结果表明，从 2D 和 3D 人脸图像中可以以相似的准确度感知物理特征。他们还建议，收集 3D 面部扫描相关的大量成本可能不适合研究面部身体特征判断的准确性。