A study that analyzed over 1,500 faces from 10 different populations worldwide discovered that faces with unique facial proportions are perceived as less attractive. It was observed that males found the more feminine faces of women to be more beautiful, whereas masculinity had little to no impact on women’s perception of male attractiveness. The study also noted that facial symmetry did not influence attractiveness perceptions. This research was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.
From an evolutionary perspective, facial beauty is a sign of health, fertility, and good genes. Facial features, such as symmetry, skin clarity, and proportionate traits, are thought to signal genetic fitness and health, guiding potential mates in their subconscious evaluations. This preference for beauty is theorized to have evolved because it helped our ancestors choose partners who were more likely to provide healthy offspring, thus enhancing the survival and reproduction of their genes.
Attaching importance to facial beauty is deeply ingrained in human psychology. It strongly influences social interactions in modern society as well. Both research studies and everyday experiences indicate that individuals with beautiful faces attract mates much more easily. This feature often provides attractive individuals better economic and social opportunities as well.
However, most previous studies on facial attractiveness focused solely on individuals of European descent from modern, developed societies. In their new study, Karel Kleisner and his colleagues aimed to examine the factors influencing facial attractiveness across a diverse array of faces from different global populations. They concentrated on facial distinctiveness (i.e., how a face’s proportions deviate from the average for a given population), symmetry, and sex typicality (how typical a face is for individuals of the same sex).
To conduct their study, these researchers used a total of 1,550 images of faces from 10 different countries. Faces were Brazilian, British, Cameroonian, Czech, Colombian, Namibian, Romanian, Turkish, Indian, and Vietnamese. The attractiveness of a face was determined by the average rating from opposite-sex evaluators from the subject’s own culture.
All the facial pictures were taken using a digital camera, with models (the people whose pictures were taken) set on a fixed distance from the camera, asked to look directly into it, and to avoid vertical and horizontal head tilting. The researchers manually applied 72 landmarks to each of the images of faces and used them to assess symmetry, averageness vs. distinctiveness of these faces, and their sex typicality.
Results showed that the symmetry of a face was not a significant factor of beauty (when other factors were considered). This finding challenges the previously held view that facial symmetry is a crucial component of facial attractiveness.
On the other hand, distinctiveness, or how far an individual’s facial proportions deviated from the average within a population, played a significant role in attractiveness perception. Distinctiveness negatively impacted perceived attractiveness. In other words, faces closer to the average (more prototypical) were generally found to be more attractive.
“Of course, asymmetry increases distinctiveness, but the direct causality from predictors to attractiveness is monopolized by distinctiveness,” the researchers noted. “… it is almost impossible to create an asymmetric face without making it distinctive, while the opposite is quite easy. Any adaptation of preferences that guards against mating with distinctive partners, also automatically guards against mating with asymmetric partners. Asymmetric faces may be rated as less attractive, not because of their asymmetry, but because they are more distinct.”
Female faces exhibiting higher sex-typicality, meaning those appearing more feminine, were universally judged as more attractive. However, increasing the masculinity of male faces did not influence their attractiveness ratings. Overall, women were rated as more attractive than men. Individuals with a lower body mass index (i.e., those who were slimmer) were rated as more attractive, with the exception of Namibian women, who found men with a higher body mass index more appealing.
“Two main conclusions may be derived from our study,” the study authors concluded.” First, preferences for facial prototypicality, symmetry, and sex-typicality do not substantially vary across geographically and culturally diverse populations. Second, facial attractiveness is robustly predicted by only two shape characteristics. It is negatively associated with distinctiveness (the opposite of averageness) and positively with morphological femininity.”
“Notably, and perhaps surprisingly, facial symmetry has no robust effect. Our results thus clearly show that facial prototypicality (population specific distance from the mean) and female sex-typicality (morphological femininity) are universally preferred across the world.”
The study makes an important contribution to the scientific understanding of factors affecting facial beauty perceptions. However, it should be noted that study authors do not report in their paper who the raters that provided the beauty ratings were and what were the instructions based on which they provided their ratings. Due to this, the details of the rating process remain unknown to the readers.
The paper, ”Distinctiveness and femininity, rather than symmetry and masculinity, affect facial attractiveness across the world,” was authored by Karel Kleisner, Petr Tureček, and Ondřej Pavlovič.
(Note: Additional context was added to this article for clarity.)