Human Facial Attractiveness in Psychological Research

The human face uniquely identifies an individual and has an irreplaceable role in interpersonal interactions. Not only are we able to recognise a person on the basis of their facial features, but the individual also closely identifies with their features. In many cultures, the face is both literally and metaphorically an important means of self-expression – it provides space for emotional expression, it enables us to read personality traits of an individual or his or her level of interest in the surrounding world. From the moment we are born, our face represents a specific object for human perception, this interest lasts for the whole of our lives and the importance of this part of the human organism stirs up lively debate among experts from various fields of scientific research.

One of the many scientific approaches which may be adopted in research into the human face is evolutionary psychology. By its very nature, this discipline primarily attempts to clarify the phylogenesis of human behaviour using knowledge of biology and psychology, and in this case of scientific research into human facial attractiveness, working with many possible interpretations of why a given individual may consider certain faces attractive. However, this seemingly simple and very natural result of human perception is the subject of numerous complicated theories, which try to understand the importance of attractiveness for the preservation of the human species and to discover the mechanisms responsible for this process.

Naturally, evolutionary psychology does not claim to have an exclusive right to interpret the meaning of attractiveness in the human facial research, quite the opposite, it closely collaborates with other scientific disciplines, which may arrive at different views and conclusions (including the use of a different terminology, which may consequently lead to a different connotation of the term ‘attractiveness’). The nature of the study of attractiveness is inherently an interdisciplinary problem and, thus, employing the theoretical bases of philosophy, knowledge of heredity mechanisms, how the human body functions and the laws of mathematics, geometry, statistics or even artistic canons represents an integral part of its exploration. All of these disciplines mutually enrich and complement one another; their mutual conflicts draw our attention to the potential limitations and ambiguity of explanations, which essentially lead to further improvement in the level of understanding.

This publication is divided into five thematic units. In the first chapter, entitled “The Human Face as a Specific Object of Perception” the authors clarify some of the reasons why it is necessary to understand the human face as a unique object of visual perception and to distinguish it from the perception of other (non-facial) objects. The essence of this chapter concentrates on the description of the functional specificity of the human face and presents other specificities discovered through scientific studies. The chapter provides an overview of the relevant scientific studies that point to the fact that facial perception shows signs of heredity, and also that the style of processing used in the recognition of faces is unique as it is not typically used for other objects, or that there are face-specific neural representations of facial perception. It also provides an overview of the areas of the brain involved in the process of facial perception as well as an outline for the plausible cooperation mechanism of these areas, thus making the chapter, as a whole, the basis for the interpretations made in the following parts of the monograph.

The chapter “Sexual Characteristics” introduces a specifically targeted scrutiny of human facial attractiveness, the essence of which lies in the importance of sexual differentiation. Similar to the previous chapters, this part focuses on the face as a whole and on the way in which male or female sexual identity is manifested there. In addition to crucial information about the importance of sex, secondary sexual features in the face and their part in the evaluation of attractiveness, in the context of sexual selection, this chapter informs the reader about the most recent research methods that utilise the ability to scan and precisely measure the specific dimensions of the human face using computer technology. It familiarises the reader with the methodology used in the formation of facial computer composites, which offer a new methodological approach to the study of the effect of specific (adjustable) human facial features on perceived attractiveness.

The fourth part of the publication, “Specific Parts of the Face”, provides an example of the fact that human facial attractiveness is not solely affected by the holistic effect of the specific arrangement, the shape, or the distances between the individual parts, but it also highlights the observation that certain parts of the face (i.e. its characteristics) may have greater importance in the perception of attractiveness than others. The chapter accounts for the importance of the eyes, mouth or skin in the evaluation of attractiveness, emphasising the evolutionary importance of these parts and suggesting why, and in what way, they provide vital information to the percipient. In this chapter, the authors also discuss the impact of globalisation on the assessment of human facial attractiveness, and using the example of skin colour, they demonstrate that on top of evolutionary important mechanisms, an environmental impact may also play a certain role and thus modify preferences. This demonstrates that despite the narrow focus and specialisation of the described approaches and subsequent interpretations, it is always necessary to also take the multi-etiological nature of the studied issue into consideration.