Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A saying for which science could not agree more. However, what is the depth of this statement? According to a new study carried out by the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) and published in the journal PloS One , attractiveness is perceived differently by men than by women .
Despite the fact that facial symmetry (an anthropometric trait par excellence of beauty) is perceived by both men and women as an attractive trait , the general perception of attractiveness is divided by gender. Thus, the scientists wanted to explore the relationship between what men and women separately find attractive, relating it to different facial features. For this, they had the participation of 266 university students aged between 18 and 30 years and on the other hand, 44 heterosexual men.
They established four fundamental traits : fluctuating facial asymmetry (the deviation from bilateral symmetry), facial medianness (the closeness of a face to the mean of the population), sexual dimorphism (the femininity of the face) and facial maturity (the youth). With these four parameters, the volunteers were asked to look directly at a camera with the most neutral expression possible. They then had to rate their own physical attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 7 (1 being the lowest and 7 the highest).
Later, the male study participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of the women’s photos on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 was the lowest score and 10 was the highest).
The results revealed that facial features influenced independently regarding the attractiveness perceived by oneself and the attractiveness detected by others as well as the participant’s gender . Thus, for example, for men, the perception of the physical attractiveness of women was affected by maturity and facial middling over the other characteristics. That is, men prefer faces with shapes closer to the average of the population, therefore, when rating the facial attractiveness of women, men give less importance to facial features that distinguish a woman from a masculine face. (for example, thick lips), than facial features that show youth.
” Our results show that fluctuating facial asymmetry is related to both subjective perception and male attractiveness,” the authors explain.
