A few days ago I came across this fantastic website www.faceresearch.org . It holds hundreds of photos of everyday people along with celebrities, with which experiments are composed. Face Research has three main parts: experiments, questionnaires and demos. The experiments are surveys in which you answer a question about preferences of appearance, whether that be masculinity or health or attractiveness, by judging a teletubbie-like head (ie. just a person's face and ears without any hair) and clicking how much or how little it represents the question. The questionnaires are literally that, but you only ever choose from drop-down bars or tick boxes. Demos are what is the most interesting since here you have a sample of people, about 120, of whom you can combine and make a composite out of. You can also do it for celebrities too, with 60 photos on offer.
As I may have already expressed, the theory of 'Koinophilia - the love of average' is quite a prominent one; so much so that both Nancy Etcoff and Dr Fernandes described this completely separately. The theory is that the more 'average' you are, or closest to the mean of all people, the more attractive you are. It seems that when you overlay more and more people's faces on top of each other, the more beautiful the face becomes because it becomes closer to the mean average. For example, Etcoff describes the work of Sir Francis Galton (cousin to Charles Darwin) in her book in a later chapter: 'Galton took images of men convicted of murder, manslaughter and violent robbery, aligned them at the pupil, superimposed them and made a single if somewhat fuzzy composite photograph of the faces. For Galton, the individual faces represented variations on a single theme, exemplars of a single visual type... he thought his composites were replicas of our mental images... [However] the composites turned out to be better looking than the original faces. In fact, the composites were all attractive... he saw that "the villainous irregularities in the [individual criminals] had disappeared...the average portrait of many persons is free from the irregularities that variously blemish he looks of each of them."' Here are his composites:
As I may have already expressed, the theory of 'Koinophilia - the love of average' is quite a prominent one; so much so that both Nancy Etcoff and Dr Fernandes described this completely separately. The theory is that the more 'average' you are, or closest to the mean of all people, the more attractive you are. It seems that when you overlay more and more people's faces on top of each other, the more beautiful the face becomes because it becomes closer to the mean average. For example, Etcoff describes the work of Sir Francis Galton (cousin to Charles Darwin) in her book in a later chapter: 'Galton took images of men convicted of murder, manslaughter and violent robbery, aligned them at the pupil, superimposed them and made a single if somewhat fuzzy composite photograph of the faces. For Galton, the individual faces represented variations on a single theme, exemplars of a single visual type... he thought his composites were replicas of our mental images... [However] the composites turned out to be better looking than the original faces. In fact, the composites were all attractive... he saw that "the villainous irregularities in the [individual criminals] had disappeared...the average portrait of many persons is free from the irregularities that variously blemish he looks of each of them."' Here are his composites:
As you can see, the composites with more people in look 'more attractive' and 'less like criminals'.
Using the 109 people available on the demos of Face Research, I decided to conduct my own research and make my own composites to put this in action. I randomly generated the column number and row number so that I could randomly choose faces to overlay. I chose to overlay 5, 20 and 50 people's faces independently since I felt that those numbers would be different enough to compare. The hypothesis was that the more people you overlaid, the more beautiful the face becomes since it becomes more 'average' and when a face becomes more average, as Etcoff explains, it becomes more 'face-like'.
Using the 109 people available on the demos of Face Research, I decided to conduct my own research and make my own composites to put this in action. I randomly generated the column number and row number so that I could randomly choose faces to overlay. I chose to overlay 5, 20 and 50 people's faces independently since I felt that those numbers would be different enough to compare. The hypothesis was that the more people you overlaid, the more beautiful the face becomes since it becomes more 'average' and when a face becomes more average, as Etcoff explains, it becomes more 'face-like'.
As you can see above, I have overlaid random faces. These are of both genders hence why the composites look androgynous. Your opinion may differ but I personally agree that the more faces overlaid makes the face more beautiful. More examples:
Women only composites
Men only composites
Again, you can make up your own mind - I personally prefer the 5 women composite to the 50 women composite (I shall explore this later) - but you can see that the more people used in the composite, the more beautiful the face looks.
However, you are now probably thinking 'surely the most beautiful people aren't average'; and that's just it. Myself, Etcoff and Dr Fernandes all agree that average can make a very good looking person, but the most exquisite people are slightly away from the average. In the words of Etcoff 'average faces do not score as off-the-scale beauties... Average faces are attractive, but they are usually not the most beautiful.' Maybe it's the 'exaggerations' of certain features that creates a celestial features. Again, Etcoff agrees with me, giving the examples of the more extravagant peacock's tail sealing the mate. She also explains how 'to be distinctive a face must have features that are either rare or far from average in shape or size'. This leads onto thoughts that if rarity is seen as beautiful, is it only so because it is something we don't get to see often, therefore have a curiosity towards it and cherish while it lasts? Maybe this is why I like the overlay of 5 women because it has a certain distinction in how it is a little odd. I shall leave you to ponder...
Again, you can make up your own mind - I personally prefer the 5 women composite to the 50 women composite (I shall explore this later) - but you can see that the more people used in the composite, the more beautiful the face looks.
However, you are now probably thinking 'surely the most beautiful people aren't average'; and that's just it. Myself, Etcoff and Dr Fernandes all agree that average can make a very good looking person, but the most exquisite people are slightly away from the average. In the words of Etcoff 'average faces do not score as off-the-scale beauties... Average faces are attractive, but they are usually not the most beautiful.' Maybe it's the 'exaggerations' of certain features that creates a celestial features. Again, Etcoff agrees with me, giving the examples of the more extravagant peacock's tail sealing the mate. She also explains how 'to be distinctive a face must have features that are either rare or far from average in shape or size'. This leads onto thoughts that if rarity is seen as beautiful, is it only so because it is something we don't get to see often, therefore have a curiosity towards it and cherish while it lasts? Maybe this is why I like the overlay of 5 women because it has a certain distinction in how it is a little odd. I shall leave you to ponder...
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