Facial Symmetry

We instantly know if we find a face attractive. It is a hard wired response with a strong and immediate impact. The feeling is deep and primordial. The real question is not if but why? In order to meaningfully improve your appearance, you must gain some understanding of the reasons behind facial attraction.

Humans, and in varying degrees most complex organisms, have preprogrammed expectations of appearance. In humans, and all higher primates, there is a tremendous expectation placed on the appearance of the face. A keystone of our species is incredibly complex and continuous communication. Until the last century - an evolutionary blink of the eye - this communication was mostly face to face. It is no wonder that facial appearance is so important. With a species that lives or dies depending on the strength of communication, the delivery mechanism of that communication- the human face- is going to be of penultimate evolutionary importance.

So what are we looking for? This answer is not simple. The best answer is that we are looking for what we need. Do we need someone to protect us, solve a problem for us, or reproduce with us? For someone trying to improve their general looks, shooting for the last one is the safest bet. While rarely obvious and often purely subconscious, the better looking among us are often rewarded in many little ways for the simple reason that others feel a sexual pull to them. Some people are looking for this, others that, but most everyone at some level is reproductively aware. As a result, to achieve maximum results with anything that involves human interaction, make your face as attractive as possible.

The more symmetrical and balanced you can make your face the better. It is the reason why people hate being bald and why some seek hair transplantation. Deep down, their genetic programming is telling them to be concerned. That is why you get upset when you look in the morning and see a receding hairline. Your genes are programmed to make you upset- warning you that your ability to attract the most genetically favorable mate is diminishing. Act sooner rather than later they are telling you.

We know what people are generally looking for from a reproductive perspective. People are hardwired to spot indicators of strong genetics. These indicators are grand mathematical averages of the human race. The closer to this average the better- it means to the reproductive areas of the brain that you are more "human" than other humans. When you seek the average or mean, you end up focused on balance, symmetry, and proportion. Hair is a critical to all three of these. Everything gets thrown off when your hairline recedes.

Balance, symmetry and proportion is what we are attracted to when it comes to another’s face. We are inherently and continuously hunting for a nonexistent perfect face indicating nonexistent perfect genes. The primary facial attractiveness characteristics are horizontal and vertical symmetry, the proper proportions as well as proper feature placement. Secondary factors are the profile face shape and other very general characteristics that people find attractive such as youthfulness.

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), possible object of natural adaptive selection pressures underlying preferences.

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.

Attractiveness of the face is correlated with other dimensions, including: having a baby face, especially for females; youthfulness of the face, especially for mature adults; familiarity of the face; certain attributions about personality to the person behind the face. These and other correlations show that judgments of attractiveness are influenced by related kinds of judgments observers make about the face, even ones unrelated to physical aspects of the face.

Each person may have individual issues about what specific facial features are attractive or unattractive, beyond the general characteristics discussed above. Some of these features may be cast into these generalizations. Moles or scars, for example, because they violate both a healthy appearance and the symmetry of the face, are probably better removed or hidden. So many beauty marks are not really, but instead illustrate a strategy of making the best of what one has. The idea of cosmetic beauty spots, which would resemble moles, was that they could cover smallpox scars, a much worse defect. Questions about the attractiveness of other specific facial features can only be determined by examining the individual face that contains them