Facial Attractiveness, Nothing but Average
image via foundation3d.com
A new study has identified the “golden ratios” of female facial attractiveness—sought since the time of the ancient Greeks as the optimal values underlying physical perfection.
Turns out, they’re not all that special.
Researchers from UC San Diego and the University of Toronto conducted four separate experiments to test the existence of ideal facial feature arrangement. The researchers asked university students to make paired comparisons of attractiveness between female faces with identical facial features but different eye-mouth distances and different distances between the eyes.
They discovered two “golden ratios,” one for length and one for width. Female faces were judged more attractive when the vertical distance between their eyes and the mouth was approximately 36 percent of the face’s length, and the horizontal distance between their eyes was approximately 46 percent of the face’s width.
The findings are decidedly average. That is, they correspond with those of an average female face.
The Greeks would have been disappointed to know this, but we’ve learned a thing or two since then. From an evolutionary perspective, “averageness” and its cousin, symmetry, are proxies for health, and we may automatically seek out average proportions as a matter of biological predisposition.
More interestingly, the findings speak to the relentless calculating of our brains. The perception of facial attractiveness could be the result of a cognitive averaging process by which we take in all the faces we see and average them to get an ideal width ratio and an ideal length ratio. Of course, we’re not aware this is all going on. We just “know it when we see it.”
No doubt other factors also contribute to facial beauty (why else would so many woman pay to have skin plumping poison injected into their lips?). But when it comes to something you can’t do terribly much about–the proportions of your face–it’s all about being average, baby.
HT: EurekAlert
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I wonder if they factored in creeping normalcy?
I wonder what it would be like if someone could trace the history of facial geometry and find a trend, then extrapolate it into the future.
Petrus Camper used cadavers several hundred years ago and measured angles to come to the exact same conclusion about the desirability of ‘average’. Pour guy got labeled the father of racism for his efforts to define beauty. When comparing the ideal beauty of greek statuary it is best to remember that statuary is designed to ‘read’ from distance and goes far off track from real bone structure. More fun thoughts.
[...] Attractive — just another word for average — we may automatically seek out average proportions as a matter [...]
In terms of beauty the golden ratio may really explain a lot. Yet, this is only objective beauty as I call it in my ebook. It is still not the same thing as sex appeal, which is very difficult to grasp. In particular the choices of women when it comes to human mating seem to contradict each other.
So scientists speculate: looks, pheromones, hormones, money, social skills, personality types, self confidence etc. All valid hypothesis. But these theories fail to answer the key question:
What is the relevance of each factor? Or are they all equal, so the woman (or man) just assigns points to each category, and than makes up her mind:
„Mr. Smith got 8 points in the wealth category, but only 1 point in physical attractiveness, and 3 in scent, so his total is 12 points on 30 point scale” ?
There is still chaos in the rules of sexual attraction. None of them seem to be absolute. We are always able to find exceptions.
Until today…
I dare to say that there are absolutely no exceptions to what I call “The No Such Couple Paradox.” I managed to prove my theory with negative evidence – evidence that a given fact did not happen.
I examined the entire population of celebrities! It is possible nowadays in the age of the internet and gossip magazines following every second of the private lives of celebrities. Then, I found certain mating behavior that has never taken place. Although, under all predominant theories, there are no rational reasons that would impede it. And I asked myself: WHY?
I claim there is not even one celebrity couple in the whole world with facial features as defined in my ebook “The No Such Couple Paradox”:
The man with very effeminate facial features and the woman also with a feminine face.
Why do I study this limited scope of human mating behavior: the choices of attractive women with very feminine faces? Because this is the only rule regarding sexual attractiveness to which you won’t find absolutely any exceptions. Not even one such couple in the whole world. What are the odds? What does it say about human mating? In accordance with the predominant theories there are no rational reasons that would impede such people to pair up.
First get acquainted with the tips given on NoSuchCouple.com. “Reading” facial features is a very tricky topic, and there is a lot of misunderstanding even among distinguished scientists.