Facial shape and judgements of female attractiveness

Abstract

The finding that photographic and digital composites (blends) of faces are considered to be attractive has led to the claim that attractiveness is averageness. This would encourage stabilizing selection, favouring phenotypes with an average facial structure. The 'averageness hypothesis' would account for the low distinctiveness of attractive faces but is difficult to reconcile with the finding that some facial measurements correlate with attractiveness. An average face shape is attractive but may not be optimally attractive. Human preferences may exert directional selection pressures, as with the phenomena of optimal outbreeding and sexual selection for extreme characteristics. Using composite faces, we show here that, contrary to the averageness hypothesis, the mean shape of a set of attractive faces is preferred to the mean shape of the sample from which the faces were selected. In addition, attractive composites can be made more attractive by exaggerating the shape differences from the sample mean. Japanese and caucasian observers showed the same direction of preferences for the same facial composites, suggesting that aesthetic judgements of face shape are similar across different cultural backgrounds. Our finding that highly attractive facial configurations are not average shows that preferences could exert a directional selection pressure on the evolution of human face shape.

Women’s Preferences for Men’s Facial Masculinity: Trade-Off Accounts Revisited

“…This is significant, as previous studies have demonstrated that prototypicality impacts on perceptions of attractiveness, whereby averageness increases attractiveness (though the most attractive faces are not necessarily average; Langlois and Roggman 1990;Perrett et al 1994;DeBruine et al 2007). The current study presented participants with male faces that were manipulated to range in sexual dimorphism from −100% to +200% of masculinity, including the original, unmanipulated masculinity level (0%).…”

Effects of exogenous testosterone and mating context on men's preferences for female facial femininity

“…Feminine female faces (versus masculine female faces) are typically represented by specific features such as tall and wide eyes, full lips, small lower face area (e.g., small chin), thin eyebrows, and high cheekbones 1 (Cunningham, 1986;Cunningham et al, 1995;Johnston, 2006;Johnston & Franklin, 1993;Perrett, May, & Yoshikawa, 1994).…”

An islet of social ability in Asperger Syndrome: Judging social attributes from faces

“…To facilitate the investigation of face processing, Perrett and his colleagues (e.g., Perrett, May, & Yoshikawa, 1994) have created a large data base of face stimuli, which has been widely used in research. We adopted some of these stimuli, which had been previously rated for the relevant social attributes to form two of the sets of images we used.…”