Facial Attractiveness
SE367A: Cognitive Science
21st November, 2014
Anubhav Bimbisariye & Brijesh Chandrakar
Mentor: Dr. Amitabha Mukherjee
Abstract
In this project, we wish to analyze 3 aspects of facial attractiveness and how people judge various faces on the grounds of these 3 features, confirming work done by our references and analysis to discover something new. There have been studies to relate attractiveness with facial features in the past. People have taken specific points under consideration like estimated age by looking at photo, expressions, physique like fat, thin, sallow, skin color etc. We wish to examine the work firstly on symmetry [1], [2], then on averageness [3], and finally on sexually dimorphic features [7]. Facial…show more content… People feel happy when someone complements them about their beauty. Also people tend to agree to an approximate level on facial attractiveness across the globe. For example, most people from Africa and Europe at the same time would agree upon the facial attractiveness of Emma Watson. So, there are aspects of facial attractiveness that are independent of the society and are universal. The reason for the same is evolution. It can be deduced that we are evolved to find certain faces attractive. When we see a face, we make a judgment about its attractiveness. The evolutionary explanation is that this judgment has evolved so that we find a mate which is best for our gene propagation. Facial attractiveness is measure of the fitness of the mate (here by fitness, we mean genetic/ phenotypic fitness and not presence or absence of…show more content… • To analyze the effect of averageness on facial attractiveness.
• To analyze the effect of feminized and masculinized features on facial attractiveness.
Our objective is to get the responses from people on faces we have selected and edited for our experiment.
Methodology
We finally created 27*2 images for our survey. We created 2 survey forms, each with 27 images. The participants were asked to rate images from 1(less attractive) to 5(very attractive). Each participant is required to fill only one survey form.
Each of those 54 images had some properties. These can be:
• Original un-edited image.
• Averaged composite (morphed) image of 3 to 13 images.
• Mirrored symmetrical image.
• Symmetry of the face quantified.
• Feminized image (quantified).
• Masculinized image.
The methods used to create these images are described