Perceived attractiveness of Czech faces across 10 cultures: Associations with sexual shape dimorphism, averageness, fluctuating asymmetry, and eye color.

Tomáš Kočnar,S Adil Saribay,Karel Kleisner,Piotr Sorokowski

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0225549

Tomáš Kočnar, S Adil Saribay + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225549

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Nov 21, 2019
Citations: 20	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Charles University

Abstract

Research on the perception of faces typically assumes that there are some universal values of attractiveness which are shared across individuals and cultures. The perception of attractiveness may, however, vary across cultures due to local differences in both facial morphology and standards of beauty. To examine cross-cultural consensus in the ratings of attractiveness, we presented a set of 120 non-manipulated photographs of Czech faces to ten samples of raters from both European (Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden, Romania, Turkey, Portugal) and non-European countries (Brazil, India, Cameroon, Namibia). We examined the relative contribution of three facial markers (sexual shape dimorphism, averageness, fluctuating asymmetry) to the perception of attractiveness as well as the possible influence of eye color, which is a locally specific trait. In general, we found that both male and female faces which were closer to the average and more feminine in shape were regarded as more attractive, while fluctuating asymmetry had no effect. Despite a high cross-cultural consensus on attractiveness standards, significant differences in the perception of attractiveness seem to be related to the level of socio-economic development (as measured by the Human Development Index, HDI). Attractiveness ratings by raters from low-HDI countries (India, Cameroon, Namibia) converged less with ratings from Czech Republic than ratings from high-HDI countries (European countries and Brazil). With respect to eye color, some local patterns emerged which we discuss as a consequence of negative frequency-dependent selection.

Highlights

In social interactions, human attention is rapidly and strongly oriented toward the rich and complex content of human faces
Perceived attractiveness of Czech faces across 10 cultures country and the same score from another target country
We found correlations between perceived facial attractiveness and the level of socio-economic development, one ought to consider with caution the degree to which one can rely on HDI to explain cross-cultural differences

Summary

Introduction

Human attention is rapidly and strongly oriented toward the rich and complex content of human faces. Perceived attractiveness of Czech faces across 10 cultures. Facial attractiveness conveys information regarding reproductive potential of prospective mating partners [3, 6, 7]. The evolutionary perspective of facial perception assumes that universally shared values of attractiveness exist across individuals and cultures [8, 9]. Because certain individual features such as coloration and symmetry convey valuable genetic information, they are perceived as attractive even in many non-human species [10, 11]. These concepts of attractiveness generally contrast with the maxim ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ [7]. Agreement in the perception of attractiveness is greater within a single culture than between cultures [15, 16] and some studies have shown that the perception of attractiveness varies across cultures depending on the socio-cultural environment [13, 16,17,18]

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