Updated 4/15/21
Beauty is average. This is truly a paradigm-shifting truth. It is confirmed by both digital photography studies and new understandings of how our brains process information. It turns out Plato had it right when he said there was a place where ideal objects existed, he just didn't know he was describing a function of our cerebral cortex. The ideal table, for instance, is a mental construct or image in our brain that allows us to recognize infinite variations in size, shape, purpose, color, aspect, texture, design, etc. as an object that is still a table. This is a remarkable fact in itself. But then comes the discovery that the most beautiful human faces end up being the average face. This is mind blown.
http://faceresearch.org/students/averageness
The idea that beauty is average comes from the digital age where photographs can be rendered in pixel formats. The size of the pixels determines the resolution of the photographs. High-resolution photographs have many more pixels. Some researchers got the bright idea of taking a lot of high-resolution digital portraits of men and women and then averaging the value of all the pixels that comprised the human male and female face to create a composite image. The images they created of the pixel averaged faces for men and women turned out to be strikingly beautiful.
Next, the researchers took the composite images along with the digital photos of the faces that made up the composite face and showed these to lots of people. They asked the subjects to rate or rank the beauty of the faces. The researchers found that the average pixel face was most often rated the most beautiful. And so we discovered that beauty is literally the average.
As a species, the researchers suggested that the ability to identify beauty, or the average face, may have served a natural selection purpose. They speculated that people with an exactly average appearance are more likely to be healthy, normal, and able to have children. Maybe so. Who knows.
The study also proved, but what the researchers didn't highlight, is the brain's amazing ability to identify the exact average of so many faces it encounters. If you think of a bell curve from statistics, the exact average is a relatively small or thin line within the normal range while the normal range of human faces is huge. Just look around and you will see tremendous variations of human faces and body types. But the exact average, or median, of all faces or body types occurs in very few individuals within the population. This fact preserves the truth that beauty is actually very rare.
If it seems like an impossible task for the brain to identify the approximate average human face, then recent understandings of the hierarchical nature of how our cortex processes data suggest how this is done. It turns out that our cerebral cortex creates idealized images of every object we see in our world. This allows us to rapidly and correctly identify objects no matter what portion of them we see or individual attributes they may have, such as color, size, texture, composition, design, etc. This attribute also allows us to create idealized images of a human face.
So beauty is average and our brains have a nearly universal sense of beauty. We share this sense because we all have a similar pool of faces from which to identify the average face.
I write this not to mansplain makeup to a woman (heavens forbid), but only to offer insight into why humans have an ideal conception of just about everything, from the ideal face to the ideal biker look. It is all a function of how our brains construct a view of the world. Let's call it the Goldilocks effect. The ideal man is not too tall, too short, or too fat, too thin, or too muscular, too flabby, etc. In effect, the perfect man is some variation of all the averages. The average height of a male is 5'7" globally. Some U.S. women prefer taller men. What is the average height of a man in the United States? It's 5'9", so of course most women prefer taller men. Taller men are closer to the average in the experience of U.S. women.
This has profound social implications. It explains how I found myself conforming to my peers in my desire to be different as a young man. When I was young and wanted to distinguish myself from my parent's generation. One way I did this was by crudely cutting the legs off my jeans to create a cut-off. It turns out everyone else in my generation was wearing them. I was one of the crowd. In trying to be different from my parents I conformed to others who, like me, also wanted to be different. I identified with an image of who I wanted to be that happened to be the idealized, or exact average, of every other young person wishing to make the same statement.
As it turns out, this self-identified peer conformity is a ubiquitous feature of our human nature. It is possible because of our ability to sort out and idealize groups of objects or people. If I asked you to imagine yourself as a Harley motorcycle biker, you would conger up an idealized version of a biker that approximately represents the average Harley biker. If you acted on this image you might buy and personalize a leather jacket, and do the same for other garments and accessories, until you were satisfied that you fit in with the self-identified peer group of Harley bikers.
We almost effortlessly do this sorting and self-identifying all the time. It explains how we are both so diverse and yet so conforming. We are always moving toward some idealized average image of the groups or things with which we identify even as those idealized averages are shifting over time. But when it comes to thinking about beauty, something is reassuring about the fact that what makes beautiful people so special is the fact that they are so average. It somehow makes me more content being more or less "normal".
Here is another study that draws the same conclusion: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03196599.pdf
Why are average faces attractive? The effect of view and averageness on the attractiveness of female faces
Beauty is average. This is truly a paradigm-shifting truth. It is confirmed by both digital photography studies and new understandings of how our brains process information. It turns out Plato had it right when he said there was a place where ideal objects existed, he just didn't know he was describing a function of our cerebral cortex. The ideal table, for instance, is a mental construct or image in our brain that allows us to recognize infinite variations in size, shape, purpose, color, aspect, texture, design, etc. as an object that is still a table. This is a remarkable fact in itself. But then comes the discovery that the most beautiful human faces end up being the average face. This is mind blown.
http://faceresearch.org/students/averageness
The idea that beauty is average comes from the digital age where photographs can be rendered in pixel formats. The size of the pixels determines the resolution of the photographs. High-resolution photographs have many more pixels. Some researchers got the bright idea of taking a lot of high-resolution digital portraits of men and women and then averaging the value of all the pixels that comprised the human male and female face to create a composite image. The images they created of the pixel averaged faces for men and women turned out to be strikingly beautiful.
Next, the researchers took the composite images along with the digital photos of the faces that made up the composite face and showed these to lots of people. They asked the subjects to rate or rank the beauty of the faces. The researchers found that the average pixel face was most often rated the most beautiful. And so we discovered that beauty is literally the average.
As a species, the researchers suggested that the ability to identify beauty, or the average face, may have served a natural selection purpose. They speculated that people with an exactly average appearance are more likely to be healthy, normal, and able to have children. Maybe so. Who knows.
The study also proved, but what the researchers didn't highlight, is the brain's amazing ability to identify the exact average of so many faces it encounters. If you think of a bell curve from statistics, the exact average is a relatively small or thin line within the normal range while the normal range of human faces is huge. Just look around and you will see tremendous variations of human faces and body types. But the exact average, or median, of all faces or body types occurs in very few individuals within the population. This fact preserves the truth that beauty is actually very rare.
If it seems like an impossible task for the brain to identify the approximate average human face, then recent understandings of the hierarchical nature of how our cortex processes data suggest how this is done. It turns out that our cerebral cortex creates idealized images of every object we see in our world. This allows us to rapidly and correctly identify objects no matter what portion of them we see or individual attributes they may have, such as color, size, texture, composition, design, etc. This attribute also allows us to create idealized images of a human face.
So beauty is average and our brains have a nearly universal sense of beauty. We share this sense because we all have a similar pool of faces from which to identify the average face.
I write this not to mansplain makeup to a woman (heavens forbid), but only to offer insight into why humans have an ideal conception of just about everything, from the ideal face to the ideal biker look. It is all a function of how our brains construct a view of the world. Let's call it the Goldilocks effect. The ideal man is not too tall, too short, or too fat, too thin, or too muscular, too flabby, etc. In effect, the perfect man is some variation of all the averages. The average height of a male is 5'7" globally. Some U.S. women prefer taller men. What is the average height of a man in the United States? It's 5'9", so of course most women prefer taller men. Taller men are closer to the average in the experience of U.S. women.
This has profound social implications. It explains how I found myself conforming to my peers in my desire to be different as a young man. When I was young and wanted to distinguish myself from my parent's generation. One way I did this was by crudely cutting the legs off my jeans to create a cut-off. It turns out everyone else in my generation was wearing them. I was one of the crowd. In trying to be different from my parents I conformed to others who, like me, also wanted to be different. I identified with an image of who I wanted to be that happened to be the idealized, or exact average, of every other young person wishing to make the same statement.
As it turns out, this self-identified peer conformity is a ubiquitous feature of our human nature. It is possible because of our ability to sort out and idealize groups of objects or people. If I asked you to imagine yourself as a Harley motorcycle biker, you would conger up an idealized version of a biker that approximately represents the average Harley biker. If you acted on this image you might buy and personalize a leather jacket, and do the same for other garments and accessories, until you were satisfied that you fit in with the self-identified peer group of Harley bikers.
We almost effortlessly do this sorting and self-identifying all the time. It explains how we are both so diverse and yet so conforming. We are always moving toward some idealized average image of the groups or things with which we identify even as those idealized averages are shifting over time. But when it comes to thinking about beauty, something is reassuring about the fact that what makes beautiful people so special is the fact that they are so average. It somehow makes me more content being more or less "normal".
Here is another study that draws the same conclusion: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/BF03196599.pdf
TIM VALENTINE, STEPHEN DARLING, and MARY DONNELLY Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, England
"Why are average faces attractive? The effect of view and averageness on the attractiveness of female faces TIM VALENTINE, STEPHEN DARLING, and MARY DONNELLY Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, England Images of faces manipulated to make their shapes closer to the average are perceived as more attractive. The influences of symmetry and averageness are often confounded in studies based on full-face views of faces. Two experiments are reported that compared the effect of manipulating the averageness of female faces in profile and full-face views. Use of a profile view allows a face to be “morphed” toward an average shape without creating an image that becomes more symmetrical. Faces morphed toward the average were perceived as more attractive in both views, but the effect was significantly stronger for full-face views. Both full-face and profile views morphed away from the average shape were perceived as less attractive. It is concluded that the effect of averageness is independent of any effect of symmetry on the perceived attractiveness of female faces."
Well, wonderfully written, as usual Brian, but I still maintain that beauty is all in the eye of the beer holder.
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