Is an attractive face attractive for all? An exploratory research on attractiveness evaluation by female observers

Abstract

Human facial attractiveness plays an important role in social decisions, e.g., mate choices. Researches have investigated gender difference on facial attractiveness perception, both in terms of the target face and the evaluators and have revealed the difference in facial features that influence attractiveness evaluation of male faces and female faces. In addition, fluctuations of female's preference on facial attractiveness evaluation of male faces have been reported. Our motivation for the current study was along the same line with this gender difference, but particularly focusing on the individual variety of evaluating facial attractiveness in female evaluators. The results showed that, while overall average patterns in attractiveness ratings were similar in evaluating male and female faces, more inter-evaluator diversity was found when the female evaluators rated more attractive male faces but not for female faces. These findings support the literature indicating the presence of deferential processes for face attractiveness evaluations of female and male faces.