What Makes a Face Attractive?
People within a given culture agree among themselves about what faces are attractive and what makes them attractive. They may disagree with people in other cultures about certain attributes of beauty, but much of what is considered attractive is shared across cultures. These largely universal characteristics of facial beauty are considered in more detail here. General characteristics of faces that contribute to beauty include symmetry, i.e., facial features are mirrored across the vertical midline of the face. Slight imperfections in symmetry are probably not significant; rather, large deviations easily perceived, such a crooked mouth, deviated nose, or one eye too small, disrupt the perception of beauty. Proportion among facial features also contributes to beauty, i.e., features, such as the mouth or nose, should not be too large or small in comparison with other facial features.
Proper placement of these features on the face is another factor contributing to beauty, i.e., the eyes are not too close together or too far apart, and the eyes and mouth lie approximately upon lines dividing the face into thirds (a guideline of portrait artists). The shape of the face in profile also shows a clear relation to attractiveness, with the straight profile (C in the table on the right) preferred.
Symmetry, good proportion, proper layout, a straight profile, and other such general characteristics may be considered more attractive because they represent a certain mean or expectation about the correct appearance of the face. This expectation of the beautiful face might have something to do with special areas in the brain for processing facial information. Marked deviations from this mean may indicate lack of fitness or ill-health (see the Health and Disease Facet), a possible object of natural adaptive selection pressures underlying preferences.
