The attractiveness of nonface averages: implications for an evolutionary explanation of the attractiveness of average faces.
Researchers have argued that humans' attraction to average faces reflects an evolved psychological mechanism to identify high-quality mates. If this direct-selection account is correct, there is no reason to expect a similar averageness bias for stimuli that are irrelevant to reproductive fitness. The current study, however, found a strong relationship between averageness and attractiveness for dogs, wristwatches, and birds. The most parsimonious explanation is that humans have a general attraction to prototypical exemplars, and that their attraction to average faces is a reflection of this more general attraction. We tested whether a general preference for familiar stimuli can account for the attractiveness of averageness. This account was not supported for dogs or birds, but could not be ruled out for watches.
Department of Psychology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. jhalbers@psy.otago.ac.nz
J
J
Halberstadt
G
G
Rhodes
D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001288:Attention; D001504:Beauty; D005075:Biological Evolution; D001717:Birds; D002755:Choice Behavior; D004285:Dogs; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual