We’ve all heard the notion that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This is generally 
taken to mean that everyone has their own internal standards of beauty and what you consider beautiful might be considered ugly by someone else. And vice versa.
But did you know that there’s scientific evidence that suggests that people’s perceptions of beauty may in fact have a universal standard based on the geometric features of the human face?
Beauty research
The International Journal of Cosmetic Science published an article entitled “The Biology of Facial Beauty” (2005, 27. 317-325 – sorry there’s no online reference for this one!) in which the authors describe “culture-independent psychological adaptations reflecting mate choice characteristics.” In other words, they showed that across different ethnic and cultural groups, people strongly agree about who is and is not attractive. The study employed facial images like the ones above which were digitally generated to demonstrate the universality of beauty without ethnic boundaries (image courtesy: Karl Grammer, LBI for Urban Ethology.)
The article goes on to cite evidence that at least some aspects of our ability to recognize beauty has a genetic basis – it’s hard-wired into us!
So although “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has a certain romantic appeal, it appears that “beauty is in the eye of the biology” might be more scientifically accurate!
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ll take the radical step of guessing here that they did NOT study what women found attractive in male faces. Color me surprised if they did.
But it seems that only the black girls look “beautiful” I mean, the white girls look mediocre and the asians… uh, nothing you would make a double take on! (And I am asian)
Study seems biased, not to mention, who was the study on? Modest people, picky people, low-self-esteemed people? lol! Cool topic anyway
There’s also the issue of the word “beauty” needing definition in and of itself. There’s at LEAST two interpretations of any question on beuty that could be at work, both of which could be at total cross-purposes to one another:
“Which of these faces do you like looking at the most?” versus
“Which of these faces reminds you most ofthe ones on TV and fashion magazines?”
Speaking personally, I wouldn’t be sure waht I was being asked if I were questioned in a study like this. Show me a list of men’s faces and ask me who the good-looking ones were, and I could give you two (almost exclusive) groups: ones that look like standard Hollywood hunks, and ones that I’d do. (To be blunt.) For most people, I suspeect a strong area of overlap, but you just can’t trust self-reporting in this stuff. We’re just responding by replicating the images we see on magazines and in movies.
Maybe you’d need to measure galvanic skin response or pupil dilation while showing someone a slideshow of entirely candid, random human faces. That’d probably do it.
Seeing how the pictures are all of women I don’t think this is a fair study. While I do believe there is a standard of beauty regarding beauty for men, with us women it’s different. There’s a lot of men I think are handsome that many think are ugly. And I think that the ones deemed to be “hot” – Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise, Leo Dicaprio, Val Klimner, Brad Pitt – and one I can’t remember the name of who surfs a lot and according to Tina Fey has really bad BO, Mathew something or other – are to me some of the ugliest men I’ve ever seen.
I’ll read the study, but as of right now I’m skeptical. Not only do I not know why a study like this is needed, but the idea that “culture-independent psychological adaptations reflecting mate choice characteristics” exist is pretty dubious. Are the researchers also culture-independent? Just looking at the pictures of the black women they chose as models tells me they very likely aren’t – their features seem a more of a mix of African and European, which in European/Western cultures usually signifies an attractive black person. As many people of African heritage have also been socialized into this belief, I think they would be hard pressed to find a group of people who would be truly unbiased.