%A Dr. Dahlia W. Zaidel
%A Jennifer A. Cohen
%J International Journal of Neuroscience
%T The face, beauty, and symmetry: Perceiving asymmetry in beautiful faces
%X The relationship between bilateral facial symmetry and beauty remains to be clarified. Here, straight head-on photographs of ?beautiful? faces from the collections of professional modeling agencies were selected. First, beauty ratings were obtained for these faces. Then, the authors created symmetrical left-left and right-right composites of the beautiful faces and asked a new group of subjects to choose the most attractive pair member. ?Same? responses were allowed. No difference between the left-left and right-right composites was revealed but significant differences were obtained between ?same? and the left-left or right-right. These results show that subjects detected asymmetry in beauty and suggest that very beautiful faces can be functionally asymmetrical.
%N 8
%K attractiveness, brain evolution, the face and the brain, functional asymmetry, symmetry, evolution, mate choice, sexual selection, nature of beauty, left-left, right-right,
beauty ratings, hemispheric specialization, faces.
%P 1165-1173
%V 115
%D 2005
%I Taylor & Francis
%L cogprints4601