A screenshot from the “Rate That Face” online experiment found at http://www.testmybrain.org/setup.php?b=309. (Image Credit: Germine et el.)
Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, or at least partly, according to new findings. While there are indeed some universal aspects of attractiveness, such as symmetry, they believe that the uniqueness of an individual’s facial preferences is determined by experiences with friends and peers, past partners, as well as social and popular media.
The data was collected primarily through a survey hosted on TestMyBrain.org and asked over 35,000 volunteers to rank 65 faces on attractiveness.
Original research paper published in Current Biology on October 1, 2015.
Names and affiliations of selected author
Laura Germine, Center for Human Genetic Research, Massachusetts General Hospital
