Neuroscience
It's a far cry from the almond eyes and radiant smiles of poetry, but according to psychology research, beauty lies, with some sterility, in the averageness and symmetry of a face. That much we know.
The trouble is, studies on this topic have tended to create highly average faces by morphing lots of real faces altogether, and in the process they've created faces that are also highly symmetrical. It's a similar tale for investigations of symmetry, where the creation of artificially symmetrical faces has tended to also lead to highly average faces.
In other words, it's been difficult to tease apart these two factors. Research that asks people to rate the attractiveness of real faces can get around this problem, but these studies are also prone to error because they've tended to only use a few anchoring points when measuring symmetry.
Now Masashi Komori and colleagues think they've found the answer. They've borrowed an innovative mathematical technique from the world of paleontology called "geometric morphometrics" and used it to measure the averageness and symmetry of 96 undergrad faces based on 72 facial feature points.
Comparing their facial measurements with the attractiveness ratings given to these faces by 114 participants, the researchers concluded that for women, it is only averageness that predicts perceived attractiveness - that is, the closer a woman's face to the average female face, the more highly attractive she was rated by participants. For male faces, by contrast, attractiveness was linked to both averageness and greater symmetry.
Why should symmetry be linked with perceived attractiveness for male faces, but not for female faces? Kormori's team aren't sure, but one clue could come from the fact that symmetry correlated with the perceived masculinity of a face (whereas its inverse correlation with the femininity of female faces was only weak). This suggests that a symmetric male face is perhaps seen as highly masculine, and a good prospect as a reproductive partner.
"In the future it is necessary to investigate which facial areas contribute to facial averageness and symmetry, and which facial areas have a greater impact on facial attractiveness," the researchers said.
_________________________________
Komori, M., Kawamura, S., & Ishihara, S. (2009). Averageness or symmetry: Which is more important for facial attractiveness? Acta Psychologica, 131 (2), 136-142 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2009.03.008
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Beauty: symmetry versus averageness
It's a far cry from the almond eyes and radiant smiles of poetry, but according to psychology research, beauty lies, with some sterility, in the averageness and symmetry of a face. That much we know.The trouble is, studies on this topic have tended to create highly average faces by morphing lots of real faces altogether, and in the process they've created faces that are also highly symmetrical. It's a similar tale for investigations of symmetry, where the creation of artificially symmetrical faces has tended to also lead to highly average faces.
In other words, it's been difficult to tease apart these two factors. Research that asks people to rate the attractiveness of real faces can get around this problem, but these studies are also prone to error because they've tended to only use a few anchoring points when measuring symmetry.
Now Masashi Komori and colleagues think they've found the answer. They've borrowed an innovative mathematical technique from the world of paleontology called "geometric morphometrics" and used it to measure the averageness and symmetry of 96 undergrad faces based on 72 facial feature points.
Comparing their facial measurements with the attractiveness ratings given to these faces by 114 participants, the researchers concluded that for women, it is only averageness that predicts perceived attractiveness - that is, the closer a woman's face to the average female face, the more highly attractive she was rated by participants. For male faces, by contrast, attractiveness was linked to both averageness and greater symmetry.
Why should symmetry be linked with perceived attractiveness for male faces, but not for female faces? Kormori's team aren't sure, but one clue could come from the fact that symmetry correlated with the perceived masculinity of a face (whereas its inverse correlation with the femininity of female faces was only weak). This suggests that a symmetric male face is perhaps seen as highly masculine, and a good prospect as a reproductive partner.
"In the future it is necessary to investigate which facial areas contribute to facial averageness and symmetry, and which facial areas have a greater impact on facial attractiveness," the researchers said.
_________________________________
Komori, M., Kawamura, S., & Ishihara, S. (2009). Averageness or symmetry: Which is more important for facial attractiveness? Acta Psychologica, 131 (2), 136-142 DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2009.03.008Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Women Really Are Better Than Men At Processing Faces
Often, if a film features two characters who look vaguely similar - for instance both are tall, dark-haired, middle-aged men - I will find myself confusing the two, as I struggle to form a distinct impression of each of their faces. Maybe it's to...
- Women Have A Superior Memory For Faces
Women are better at remembering faces than men, probably because they're more interested in social aspects of the world than men are. That's according to Jenny Rehnman and Agneta Herlitz who presented 212 Swedish men and women with 60 faces to...
- The Downside Of Being Good-looking And Wealthy
A rich, good-looking man seeking a wife might do well to play down his wealth. That's the implication of a study by John Lycett and colleagues suggesting that some women are wary of men who are both attractive and wealthy. One hundred and eighty-six...
- Your Trustworthiness Is Judged In A Tenth Of A Second, Or Less
It takes just a tenth of a second for people to make judgements about you based on your facial appearance. Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov asked university students to rate the attractiveness, likeability, competence, trustworthiness, and aggressiveness...
- Why Moving Faces Are Easier To Recognise
Psychologists have previously shown that moving faces are easier to recognise than a static image of a face. Karen Lander and Lewis Chuang at the University of Manchester sought to find out why. In a first experiment, 48 psychology students viewed degraded...