The Golden Mean

The researchers at faceresearch.org have arrived at the conclusion that average is beautiful. The face at left was created by averaging the features of 15 attractive female faces (as judged by the participants in a research study), and it was judged more attractive than any of the 15.

All well and good, but what I really want to know is if anybody can create an uglier average than my creation below? As you'll discover, creating a pretty face is easy, but achieving ugliness is quite challenging. There's a lesson to be learned here. Think about it.




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As it actually turns out, although averaged composites are generally more attractive than the individuals they are comprised from, averageness and attractiveness are not equivalent. Perret et al performed an experiment where a composite was created from photos of 60 women (the first image), and a second composite was assembled from a subset of the 15 women that were judged the most attractive within those 60 (the second image). Participants in the study consistently ranked the second image more attractive than the first. Taking the exercise a step further, Perrett et al exaggerated the differences between the attractive composite and the normal composite to create a third image, which participants ranked most attractive of all (termed hyper-attractive). However, as the hyper-attractive image is the least average of the faces, it follows that averageness and attractiveness are not equivalent.

Faceresearch.org contains a number of facinating articles that are well worth reading (e.g. how feminine features can enhance the attractiveness of the male face, how gaze direction affects attractiveness, etc). You can log in with a guest account by clicking on Register, continuing through the consent screen, and selecting log in as guest.