Subjectivity and complexity of facial attractiveness.

ABSTRACT: The origin and meaning of facial beauty represent a longstanding puzzle. Despite the profuse literature devoted to facial attractiveness, its very nature, its determinants and the nature of inter-person differences remain controversial issues. Here we tackle such questions proposing a novel experimental approach in which human subjects, instead of rating natural faces, are allowed to efficiently explore the face-space and "sculpt" their favorite variation of a reference facial image. The results reveal that different subjects prefer distinguishable regions of the face-space, highlighting the essential subjectivity of the phenomenon. The different sculpted facial vectors exhibit strong correlations among pairs of facial distances, characterising the underlying universality and complexity of

SUBMITTER: Ibanez-Berganza M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6557895 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature