Appearance of symmetry, beauty, and health in human faces
Symmetry is an important concept in biology, being related to mate selection strategies, health, and survival of species. In human faces, the relevance of left–right symmetry to attractiveness and health is not well understood. We compared the appearance of facial attractiveness, health, and symmetr...
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Published in | Brain and cognition Vol. 57; no. 3; pp. 261 - 263 |
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Main Authors | , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
United States
Elsevier Inc
01.04.2005
Elsevier |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Symmetry is an important concept in biology, being related to mate selection strategies, health, and survival of species. In human faces, the relevance of left–right symmetry to attractiveness and health is not well understood. We compared the appearance of facial attractiveness, health, and symmetry in three separate experiments. Participants inspected front views of faces on the computer screen and judged them on a 5-point scale according to their attractiveness in Experiment 1, health in Experiment 2, and symmetry in Experiment 3. We found that symmetry and attractiveness were not strongly related in faces of women or men while health and symmetry were related. There was a significant difference between attractiveness and symmetry judgments but not between health and symmetry judgments. Moreover, there was a significant difference between attractiveness and health. Facial symmetry may be critical for the appearance of health but it does not seem to be critical for the appearance of attractiveness, not surprisingly perhaps because human faces together with the human brain have been shaped by adaptive evolution to be naturally asymmetrical. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-1 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 0278-2626 1090-2147 |
DOI: | 10.1016/j.bandc.2004.08.056 |