Your face or mine

1
Your face or mine?

• An evolutionary perspective on facial beauty

2
Introduction

• Why do we find some faces more attractive than
  others?
• Evolutionary reasons
• Finding a mate
• Communication
• Literature suggests a link between facial
  attractiveness and
• Health
• Youth and fertility
• Information processing
• Social attributions

3
Health

• Symmetry
• Moller and Thornhill (1998) genes
• Feng (2002) immunity
• Averageness
• Langlois and Roggman (1990)
• Complexion
• Braun et al (2001)

4
Youth and fertility

• Baby-like features
• Buss (1989)
• Langlois and Roggman (1990)
• Sexual maturity
• Cunningham (1986)
• Hormonal levels
• Johnston Franklin (1993) oestrogen and
  testosterone
• Penton-voak (1999) womens menstrual cycle

5
Information processing

• Recognising faces
• Symmetry
• Enquist and Arak (1994) objects in the visual
  field
• Sones (2002) developmental study
• Features
• Bruce (1988) distinctive feature
• Encoding and processing
• Golden ratio
• Video The Human Face
• Borrell (1994)
• Livio (2000)

6
Social attributions

• You have an honest face.
• Dion et al (1972)
• Adapting to different contexts
• Cunningham (1986)
• Sexual behaviour
• Little et al. (2001)
• Thornhill and Gangestad (1999)

7
Critique

• Other factors in attraction
• Role of personality
• Methodology of studies
• Computer manipulation of images
• Role of movement?
• Sample size
• Cultural differences and changes over time

8
Conclusion

• Summary
• Why is it important to understand facial
  attractiveness?
• Our take on the evolutionary theory
• Further areas of research

9
References I

• Borrell (1994) Beauty making sense of sex
  appeal. http//www.geocities.com/Omegaman_UK/beau
  ty.html
• Braun, C., Grundl, M., Marberger, C., Scherber,
  C. (2001) Beauty check ursachen und folgen von
  attrakivitat report. http//www.beautycheck.de
• Bruce, V. (1988) Recognising faces. East
  Sussex Lawrence Erlbaum Associated Ltd.
• Buss, D. M. Sex differences in human mate
  preferences Evolutionary hypotheses tested in
  37 cultures, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 12
  1989, 1-49
• Cowley, G. (1996) Newsweek, 127 23 1996, 60-67.
  (http//hss.fullerton.edu/sociology/orleans/symmet
  ry.txt).
• Cunningham, M. R. Measuring the physical in
  physical attractiveness quasi experiments on the
  socio-biology of female facial beauty, Journal of
  Personality and Social Psychology, 50 1986,
  925-35.
• Dion, K., Berscheid, E., Walster, E. What is
  beautiful is good, Journal of Personality and
  Social Psychology, 24 1972, 207-213.
• Enquist, M. and Arak, A. Symmetry, beauty and
  evolution. Nature, 372 (6502) 1994, 162 172.
• Feng, C. (2002) Looking good the psychology and
  biology of beauty. Journal of Young
  Investigators, Issue 6. (http//www.jyi.org/volume
  s/volume6/issue6/features/feng.html)

10
References II

• Johnston, V. S. Franklin, M. Is beauty in the
  eye of the beholder? Ethol. Sociobiol., 14 1993,
  183-199.
• Langlois, J.H., Roggman, L.A. (1990).
  Attractive faces are only average. Psychological
  Science, 1, 115-121.
• Little, A. C., Burt, D. M, Penton-Voak, I.
  Perrett, D. I. (2001) Self-perceived
  attractiveness influcenece human female
  preferences for sexual dimorphism and symmetry in
  male faces. Proceedings of the Royal Society of
  London, B268, 39-44.
• Livio, M. The golden ratio and aesthetics.
  Plus magazine living mathematics, Issue 22
  November 2002, http//plus.maths.org/issue22/featu
  res/golden/
• Moller, A. P. and Thornhill, R. Bilateral
  symmetry and sexual selection a meta-analysis,
  American Naturalist, 151 1998, 174-192.
• Penton-Voak, I. S., Perrett, D., Castles. D.,
  Burt, D. M., Koyabashi, T., Murray, L. K.
  Female preferences for male face change
  cyclically, Nature, 399 1999, 741-742.
• Sones, M. (2002) Human beauty,
  http//www.beautyworlds.com/humanbeauty.htm
• Thornhill, R. and Gangestad, S. W. Facial
  attractiveness, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3
  1999, 452-460