Individual Aesthetic Preferences for Faces Are Shaped Mostly by Environments, Not Genes.

ABSTRACT: Although certain characteristics of human faces are broadly considered more attractive (e.g., symmetry, averageness), people also routinely disagree with each other on the relative attractiveness of faces. That is, to some significant degree, beauty is in the "eye of the beholder." Here, we investigate the origins of these individual differences in face preferences using a twin design, allowing us to estimate the relative contributions of genetic and environmental variation to individual face attractiveness judgments or face preferences. We first show that individual face preferences (IP) can be reliably measured and are readily dissociable from other types of attractiveness judgments (e.g., judgments of scenes, objects). Next, we show that individual face preferences result primarily from

SUBMITTER: Germine L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4629915 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature