Does facial attractiveness influence perception of epilepsy diagnosis? An insight into stigma in epilepsy.

Background: Using a group of young healthy individuals and patients with multiple sclerosis (pMS), we aimed to investigate whether the physical attractiveness judgment affects perception of epilepsy. We tested hypothesis that subjects, in the absence of relevant clues, would catch upon the facial attractiveness when asked to speculate which person suffers epilepsy and select less attractive choices.

Method: Two photo-arrays (7 photos for each gender) selected from the Chicago Face Database (180 neutral faces of Caucasian volunteers with unknown medical status) were shown to study participants.