Female Facial Attractiveness Assessed by 2D Photography

Abstract

Background: Esthetic concern is always first priority when patient considering an orthodontic treatment. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the perception of female facial attractiveness is consistency across gender, age and professional background. Materials and methods: A series of 100 sets female 2D photos were projected on a screen. Each set was consisted one frontal and two laterals right and left views and was shown for 5 seconds. Raters should mark their impression of facial attractiveness on a 5-point Likert scale within the next 3 seconds. Raters included hospital staff and laypeople. The consistency of facial attractive perception was compared between raters according to gender, age and professional background. Results: High internal consistency of rating female facial attractiveness was achieved by evaluator, no matter of gender, age, or professional background. Every evaluation show central tendency and unimodal distribution regardless of the attractiveness or rater’s background. More consistency is found for the evaluation of unattractive faces than attractive faces by both hospital staff and laypeople. In the evaluation of 2D photos, females give higher score than males and the significant different was found among laypeople (p=0.011). No significant different between the rating of senior and junior raters (p=0.457 and 0.781 for hospital staff and laypeople). Hospital staff rated significant higher score than laypeople (p=0.005). Conclusion: The Likert’s rating of 2D female facial attractiveness had central tendency and unimodal distribution regardless of attractiveness or rater’s background. The ratings for unattractive faces were more consistent than that of attractive faces. Laypeople were more critical than hospital staff in the evaluation of female facial attractiveness, especially for male laypeople.