Facial color properties affect perceived age.

Age is a fundamental social attribute that affects rights, responsibilities and even social status. Color information of the face can affect perceived age, but the nature of its contribution, independent of luminance information, remains underexplored. To better characterize the role of color in age perception, we conducted two experiments. In our first experiment, we tested whether natural age-related changes in facial color alone can drive changes in perceived age. In our second experiment, we manipulated red-green contrast across faces aged 18-91 and tested the effect of this manipulation of perceived youthfulness. Our findings demonstrate that natural age-related color changes do provide cues for age perception, dissociable from luminance information. We also found that the optimal red-green contrast level to make faces look the youngest was significantly higher than the originals, meaning that faces tended to appear younger when their redness was accentuated, even though average face redness increases with age. Our analysis revealed that younger faces required greater increases in redness level compared to their older counterparts to achieve the youngest appearance. These results suggest that the spatial distribution of redness contributes to apparent youthfulness, especially in younger faces.