Do Glasses Modulate Age Perception?

Abstract

No formal studies have reported how glasses influence age perception, except for a London Vision Clinic survey that found that people over 45 look 5 or more years older when wearing eyeglasses. To investigate the effect of eyeglasses and sunglasses on age perception while controlling for age and interpersonal differences, we digitally manipulated the photographs of faces of 50 young adults, to create two age conditions (young and old) and three eyewear conditions (no glasses, eyeglasses, and sunglasses). Participants then estimated the age of the faces, displayed in random order. Contrary to the generally accepted beliefs that wearing eyeglasses makes you look older and wearing sunglasses make you look younger, our results suggest that the effect of glasses on age perception is rather small.

Keywords: age perception; eyeglasses; eyewear; faces; glasses; sunglasses.

Figure 1.

Modulation of Age Perception by Eyewear. A: Each dark orange filled circle represents the result from one participant, with x and y-coordinates, respectively, representing the values obtained for two conditions: no glasses (examples stimuli in bottom right corner) and eyeglasses (examples stimuli in top left corner). Data points above the identity line represent data from participants who perceived faces with eyeglasses as older compared with those without glasses. The statistical significance between the two conditions is expressed as a p value, shown at the top of the panel. The average perceived age for each condition is displayed at the left (eyeglasses) and right (no glasses) of the equality line. B: The same as for Panel A, but comparing the no glasses (x-axis) and sunglasses (y-axis) conditions. C and D: Similar to, respectively, A and B, but for faces that were manipulated to look older using an aging filter.