Take Several Hundred Photos of Faces: You Get The Average Man and Woman.

Post National Monitor ^ | 2/5/2011 | Post National Monitor

[Yo-Yo]

They’re both the same face.

[Hardastarboard]

Good observation. I didn’t notice that.

[edpc]

The only differences are the hairline and eyebrow texture.

[CondiArmy]

Just damn! Time to move to Burma or Ethiopia.

But seriously, did anyone tell the researchers that South Africa is 90% black?

[edpc]

What feature makes a face attractive?

It's very subjective. Personally, I don't find square-featured jaws or cleft chins attractive on females. But...that's just me.

[DainBramage]

Recalibration photo

[LoveUSA]

The problem with this study is that it relies on two-dimensional images. There are specific features that make a person "photogenic" and one of them is a square-shaped face. This makes sense because a square face allows the features to be viewed in perfect context to the size and shape of the head when flattened by a photograph. OTH, there are people who are attractive, even beautiful, who have elongated or more angular faces. In the three-dimensional experience of the real world, their faces are attractive because a particular feature such as a large nose or thin-lipped mouth is reduced in visual importance because the edges of the face are not sharply defined.

The net is: beauty here is defined as "photogenic".

[LiteKeeper]

Cheek bones on picture on the right are higher, characteristic of the female face.

[enraged]

If it’s all the same, I’ll go with the one on the right.

[null and void]

Her eyes are larger, chin is slightly narrower, he has a 5 o’clock shadow, her cheek bones are a little more delicate, he has a bigger neck.

But yeah, they’re very similar.

Average, you might say...

[Optimist]

creepy

[Doc Savage]

Shouldn’t she also have beard???????????????

[Doc Savage]

Holy Crap! How did you get a photo of a Sasquatch???????????????

[seowulf]

So, when someone tells a cop that the perp looked average this is what they mean.

These photos should come in handy.

Round up the usual suspects!

[miele man]

Amazingly beautiful women for “average” faces. Very interesting study.

[corkoman]

whoa - these two look like my two eldest kids - hes 20 shes 22. It figures - Dad is Irish and Mom is cuban.

[Chode]

phi = 1.61803399

[martin_fierro]

Average faces are attractive, but not all of them. It is crucial which faces are used to compute an average face. Composites made from unattractive faces remain rather unattractive and average faces from attractive faces remain attractive.

I'm just glad they left you two out.