The Circles of Prominence: Ideal Ratios That Determine the Basis of Facial Beauty

Abstract

Introduction: To test a key ratio within the face that establishes a basic order thought to define facial beauty. The ratio is based on the distance between the horizontal level of the iris to the nasal tip, the nasal tip to the lower lip, and the lower lip to the menton. Materials and Methods: This was a subjective survey in which 27 pictures (3 variables with 3 values) were displayed to evaluators who would judge all of the pictures to assess their general attractiveness. To construct the pictures, we varied the distance between (1) the horizontal level of the iris, (2) the center of the nasal tip, (3) center of the lower lip, and (4) menton with the distance from the center of the iris to the midline fixed at 3 iris widths. These 3 distances were varied by 2, 3, or 4 iris widths. One hundred random patients (data not shown) from a head and neck surgery clinic were asked to place all of the photos in order from most aesthetically pleasing to least aesthetically pleasing. The rankings of all 100 patients/evaluators were averaged for each picture. Essentially, the lower the average, the more aesthetically pleasing the picture was thought to be by our test population. Because of the equivocal results from the first part of this study, we carried out another study placing the 2 most aesthetically pleasing pictures (pictures 5 and 14) from the first part of the study in another head-to-head study. In the second part of the study, we asked 127 patients from a facial plastic surgery office to judge whether picture 5 or 14 was the more attractive picture. Results: The first part of the study showed that 2 facial representations of picture 5 (average ranking 4.67) and picture 14 (average ranking 4.28) were determined to be the most aesthetically pleasing, where rank 1 was judged to be the most attractive. Statistically through permutation tests (P < .01), picture 14 (ratio 3, 3, 3) was shown to be more preferred over all pictures other than picture 5 (ratio 4, 3, 3). Picture 5 had a P = .2230. A Bonferroni correction showed that picture 14 was ranked No. 1 more often than picture 5, with P < .0011. In the head-to-head study, 88 people chose picture 14 and 39 chose picture 5. A 1-sample test of proportion showed that this was highly significant, showing that picture 14 was indeed the more pleasing picture (P < .01). Conclusion: The study supports the idea of the importance of the iris, nasal tip, and lower lip as the main objects used when people assess beauty within a face. When the distance between these objects are varied, the presence of beauty is also varied. Based on this study, when these elements are balanced equally between each other, this arrangement is found to be more beautiful. Statistically, we were able to show that picture 14 was judged to be the most attractive where the distances were all equal (3 iris widths). This study further supports the validity of the Circles of Prominence as a theory on facial beauty.