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Is beauty in the eye
of the beholder? And by that I mean, is beauty in the eye of only the person
looking (i.e. individual preferences) or is beauty universal (i.e. people
universally find the same faces attractive)?
A recent study tested
the idea of beauty – and where the ‘idea’ comes from (Time, October 1, 2015). Jeremy Wilmer, assistant professor of
psychology at Wellesley College in America rated people’s views of
attractiveness (Current Biology,
October 2015).
There were two parts
to the study. The first part of the study looked at the views of 35,000
participants. They were asked to look at the website Testmybrain.org and rate
faces for attractiveness. Previous research indicated that symmetrical faces
were rated highly for attractiveness, and the current research wanted to test
that view.
For the second part of
the study researchers looked at the facial preferences of 547 pairs of
identical twins and 214 pairs of fraternal twins. Identical twins are from one
egg that split into two, and fraternal twins are not identical because they
come from two separate eggs developed at the same time. Using twins for this
experiement aimed to test the nature versus nurture theory – that is, whether people’s
views are shaped by their genetics (nature) vs whether people’s views are
shaped by their environment and upbringing (nurture). If genetics is the influencing
factor, researchers would expect identical twins to find the same faces
attractive – more than fraternal twins would.
The results of the
study showed that 50% of people’s preferences for faces is unique to the
individual. It also found that attractiveness is shaped by individual
experiences, related specifically to events experienced in life and influenced
by people who have entered a person’s life circle.
Therefore beauty is in the eye of the beholder, meaning
that individiduals have their own unique identifiers of beauty. If two people
looked at the same faces, there would be approximately 50% commonality – i.e.
half of the faces the people found to be attractive would appear on the other
person’s list of attractive faces. But the other 50% of faces on each person’s
list would be unique to them.
Researchers found that
identical twins were ‘really, really different’ from each other in their facial
aesthetic preferences. Just because they shared DNA it did not mean that they
shared the same views about attractiveness. But researchers also found that
each identical twin had a ‘type’ – a type of face that they preferred – whether
they knew it consciously or not. Hence people have a subconscious ‘type’ of
person that they gravitate toward.
The researchers at
Wellesley College did not document the actual facial features that most people
found attractive, because it wasn’t part of the research. However researchers
at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted a study on previous literature on
the topic. Laura Germine found that faces paired with positive information were
found to be more attractive. Hence if a person is always told that certain
faces are attractive, that person tends to also find those type of faces
attractive. Exposure to certain faces makes them seem more attractive, which
means that faces not typically seen in the everyday environment may appear to
be less attractive.
So who a person
finds attractive seems to be based more by experiences that are very unique to
each person – and not where a person grew up, or went to school, or family
preferences, or even the same genes. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
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