Yoko Mizokami Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University

The color and texture of the face are significantly related to essential judgments such as age, health condition, impression, and aesthetics. However, the recognition characteristics of facial skin often cannot be explained by conventional color science. For example, it has been shown that reddish faces appear brighter than yellowish faces, even when the brightness is equal. This phenomenon seems to be unique to Japanese observers and different in other countries. Such characteristics of face color recognition would be due to how the visual correction function works. In this study, we will verify environmental factors (e.g., perceptual characteristics according to the skin color distribution of each environment), social factors (e.g., perceptual characteristics favorable for emotional recognition), and cultural factors (e.g., makeup, preference) for the facial color and Shitsukan recognition mechanism. We will focus on the following topics: “The effect of face color on facial brightness recognition,” “The effect of face color on emotional recognition,” “The effect of facial texture on facial impression.” Then, we investigate the facial color and texture recognition mechanism, including social and cultural influences by international comparison.