What kind ot face do we prefer7 The preferences of very
young children and a high degree of cross-cultural agreement
challenge the notion that standards of beauty are
dictated by culture For example, body and facial
symmetry (of right and left halves) in both women and
men contributes to standards that most people have in
judging beauty Perhaps surprisingly, facial overageness is
another plus
Rhodes (2006), who has researched extensively how
we process information about the human face, asked
whether facial beauty depends more on common physical
qualities than on striking features. Participants
judged caricatures of faces, each of which was systematically
varied from average to distinctive She found that
averageness, rather than distinctiveness, was correlated
with facial attractiveness (see also Rhodes Sumich &
Byatt, 1999). The averageness effect has also been
confirmed in other studies (e g Langlois, Roggman &.
Musselman, 1994).
Rhodes (Rhodes & Tremewan, 1996; suggested an
evolutionary basis for this effect' average faces draw the
attention of infants to those objects in their environment
that most resemble the human face - an average face is
like a prototype Face preferences may be adaptations
that guide mate choice, Why would facial averageness
(and also facial symmetry) make a person more attractive?
One possibility is that these cues make a face seem
more familiar and less strange. Another possibility is that
both averageness and symmetry are signals of good
health and therefore of 'good genes'- cues that we latch
on to in searching for a potential mate.
See Figure 14.2 for examples of how averageness
has been created by combining sets of real faces into
composite faces