# Subjectivity and complexity of facial attractiveness

## TL;DR

This study introduces a novel experimental method to explore facial attractiveness by allowing subjects to modify a reference face, revealing the subjectivity and underlying universal features of facial beauty.

## Contribution

It presents a new approach for studying facial attractiveness by enabling subjects to sculpt their preferred face variations, uncovering subjective preferences and universal facial features.

## Key findings

- Subjects prefer different regions of face-space, indicating high subjectivity.
- Strong correlations among facial distances suggest universal cognitive processes.
- Facial preferences are robust across different individuals.

## Abstract

The origin and meaning of facial beauty represent a longstanding puzzle. Despite the profuse literature devoted to facial attractiveness, its very nature, its determinants and the nature of inter-person differences remain controversial issues. Here we tackle such questions proposing a novel experimental approach in which human subjects, instead of rating natural faces, are allowed to efficiently explore the face-space and 'sculpt' their favorite variation of a reference facial image. The results reveal that different subjects prefer distinguishable regions of the face-space, highlighting the essential subjectivity of the phenomenon.The different sculpted facial vectors exhibit strong correlations among pairs of facial distances, characterising the underlying universality and complexity of the cognitive processes, and the relative relevance and robustness of the different facial distances.