What are the key points to an attractive face?
One of the most fundamental aspects of facial attractiveness is symmetry. "Symmetry refers to the balance and proportion of facial features".
From an evolutionary perspective, symmetric faces are often perceived as a sign of good health and genetic fitness. Studies show that individuals with more symmetric faces are often deemed more attractive, and enhance one's trust.
The spacing and positioning of the eyes contribute to overall facial symmetry and balance. Ideally, the eyes should align with certain facial proportions, creating a harmonious look. If the eyes lack being in harmony with the rest of one's features, it creates an off-balance, unappealing look. Very good symmetry provides one with the ability to grow without genetic or environmental disruptions.
Your eyes are the centre of your beauty. People are constantly looking directly in your eyes, and then actively assessing the rest of your features; then they put all your features in one and determine your beauty.
How the brain identifies beauty;
- As soon as your eyes absorb one's face, your visual cortex processes the image almost instantly, (recognising the face and it's symmetry), within a timeframe of 0-300ms.
- Next, the amygdala and nucleus accumbens both work to release dopamine (feel-good neurotransmitter) as the initial takes place within 300-500ms.
- Afterwards, the prefrontal cortex is the stage where cognitive appraisal goes into overdrive within a second or more.
- Lastly, the hypothalamus and endrocrine system adjust arousal and build up bonding within seconds/minutes.
GOLDEN RATIOS:
"The secret of facial beauty has attracted the attention of artists and researchers for a long time. In ancient time, some sculptors and painters believed that the golden ratio is underlying beautiful faces. In ancient China, the vertical thirds and hori- zontal fifths rule was proposed. Since 1990s, the study of facial beauty perception has been popular in the psychology field. Some influential hypotheses, such as the averageness hypothesis, have been proposed and numerous studies have been reported and published. Facial beauty study has attracted the attention of computer scientists since 2000. Biometric techniques have been used for facial beauty modeling and developing real-life application systems."
The golden ratio (1.618), also called the divine proportion, can be seen in art, architecture, fashion, birds, insects, and flowers, etc. and has been believed to be lurking within the human body since the renaissance.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing, Human Figure in a circle, is a great example of illustrating the golden ratio of the human body, presenting the idea that the golden ratio has always been there.
Human figure illustrating 'divine proportion'
The vertical thirds and horizontal fifths rules were proposed in ancient China.
As shown in the image above, the vertical thirds rules divide the length of the face into three parts of equal length:
from hairline to eyebrow, from eyebrow to nasal floor, and from nasal floor to chin.
The horizontal rules divide the width of the face into five segments.
(Right) Egyptian queen Neferneferuaten Nefertiti (1370–1330 BC)
(Very popular at one point) Marquardt’s Phi mask (Left)
Another evolutionary theory for the preference of averageness in faces is that extreme genotypes are more likely to be homozygous for deleterious alleles (. Rhodes et al. (2001b) showed that facial averageness is positively related to medical health as measured from actual medical records in both men and women. Facial averageness can then be potentially associated with both direct benefits in terms of associating with healthy, parasite- and/or disease-free partners and indirect benefits of heterozygous genes that can be passed onto offspring.
It's the same with newborn babies - newborns prefer attractive faces.
Newborn infants have been found to learn about individual faces very rapidly.
Several researchers have reported that the mother's face is heavily preferred to that of a female strangers’ faces within hours from birth. Furthermore, Walton, Armstrong, and Bower (1998) presented findings suggesting that newborn infants can recognize a face after having seen it for only .8 sec.
The stimuli were 24 photographs of female faces, which were derived from an original set of 12 pictures of White female faces; half of the original set were judged by adults to be attractive and half were judged to be unattractive.
The findings from these two conditions are that newborn infants appear not to discriminate between attractive and unattractive faces when the internal features of the paired facial stimuli are the same, but that they do make this discrimination, and confirm earlier findings that newborn infants prefer attractive faces, when the internal facial features differ.
After removing trials in which infants failed to compare both stimuli, the researchers found that infants showed different patterns of visual preference in the two experimental conditions, suggesting that the infants were sensitive to the differences manipulated (internal vs. external facial features).
After removing trials in which infants failed to show a preference and thus failed to compare both stimuli, the researches found that infants that did prefer showed different patterns of visual preference in the experimental condition. This suggests that the infants were sensitive to the manipulated morphs (or people, I don't even know if the ugly version of the faces are the real people or if the attractive ones are). This is a result of an internal vs external facial featured battle.
In summary, the infants clearly preferred the attractive faces to the uglier ones, getting nervous at the distorted figures on top left and bottom left.
- Facial symmetry and proportionality is overall attractive.
- Eye shape and size impact perception - a slayer eye area is much more dominating.
- Jawline and cheekbones define appeal, and enhance your likability.
- Lip fullness and shape matter - important, especially when it comes to the philtrum's length.
One of the most fundamental aspects of facial attractiveness is symmetry. "Symmetry refers to the balance and proportion of facial features".
From an evolutionary perspective, symmetric faces are often perceived as a sign of good health and genetic fitness. Studies show that individuals with more symmetric faces are often deemed more attractive, and enhance one's trust.
The spacing and positioning of the eyes contribute to overall facial symmetry and balance. Ideally, the eyes should align with certain facial proportions, creating a harmonious look. If the eyes lack being in harmony with the rest of one's features, it creates an off-balance, unappealing look. Very good symmetry provides one with the ability to grow without genetic or environmental disruptions.
Your eyes are the centre of your beauty. People are constantly looking directly in your eyes, and then actively assessing the rest of your features; then they put all your features in one and determine your beauty.
How the brain identifies beauty;
- As soon as your eyes absorb one's face, your visual cortex processes the image almost instantly, (recognising the face and it's symmetry), within a timeframe of 0-300ms.
- Next, the amygdala and nucleus accumbens both work to release dopamine (feel-good neurotransmitter) as the initial takes place within 300-500ms.
- Afterwards, the prefrontal cortex is the stage where cognitive appraisal goes into overdrive within a second or more.
- Lastly, the hypothalamus and endrocrine system adjust arousal and build up bonding within seconds/minutes.
GOLDEN RATIOS:
"The secret of facial beauty has attracted the attention of artists and researchers for a long time. In ancient time, some sculptors and painters believed that the golden ratio is underlying beautiful faces. In ancient China, the vertical thirds and hori- zontal fifths rule was proposed. Since 1990s, the study of facial beauty perception has been popular in the psychology field. Some influential hypotheses, such as the averageness hypothesis, have been proposed and numerous studies have been reported and published. Facial beauty study has attracted the attention of computer scientists since 2000. Biometric techniques have been used for facial beauty modeling and developing real-life application systems."
The golden ratio (1.618), also called the divine proportion, can be seen in art, architecture, fashion, birds, insects, and flowers, etc. and has been believed to be lurking within the human body since the renaissance.
Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing, Human Figure in a circle, is a great example of illustrating the golden ratio of the human body, presenting the idea that the golden ratio has always been there.
Human figure illustrating 'divine proportion'
The vertical thirds and horizontal fifths rules were proposed in ancient China.
As shown in the image above, the vertical thirds rules divide the length of the face into three parts of equal length:
from hairline to eyebrow, from eyebrow to nasal floor, and from nasal floor to chin.
The horizontal rules divide the width of the face into five segments.
(Right) Egyptian queen Neferneferuaten Nefertiti (1370–1330 BC)
(Very popular at one point) Marquardt’s Phi mask (Left)
It's the same with newborn babies - newborns prefer attractive faces.
Newborn infants have been found to learn about individual faces very rapidly.
Several researchers have reported that the mother's face is heavily preferred to that of a female strangers’ faces within hours from birth. Furthermore, Walton, Armstrong, and Bower (1998) presented findings suggesting that newborn infants can recognize a face after having seen it for only .8 sec.
The stimuli were 24 photographs of female faces, which were derived from an original set of 12 pictures of White female faces; half of the original set were judged by adults to be attractive and half were judged to be unattractive.
The findings from these two conditions are that newborn infants appear not to discriminate between attractive and unattractive faces when the internal features of the paired facial stimuli are the same, but that they do make this discrimination, and confirm earlier findings that newborn infants prefer attractive faces, when the internal facial features differ.
After removing trials in which infants failed to compare both stimuli, the researchers found that infants showed different patterns of visual preference in the two experimental conditions, suggesting that the infants were sensitive to the differences manipulated (internal vs. external facial features).
After removing trials in which infants failed to show a preference and thus failed to compare both stimuli, the researches found that infants that did prefer showed different patterns of visual preference in the experimental condition. This suggests that the infants were sensitive to the manipulated morphs (or people, I don't even know if the ugly version of the faces are the real people or if the attractive ones are). This is a result of an internal vs external facial featured battle.
In summary, the infants clearly preferred the attractive faces to the uglier ones, getting nervous at the distorted figures on top left and bottom left.
