Attractiveness of facial averageness and symmetry in non-Western cultures:In search of biologically based standards of beauty

Averageness and symmetry are attractive in Western faces and are good candi dates for biologically based standards of beauty. A hallmark of such standa rds is that they are shared across cultures. We examined whether facial ave rageness and symmetry are attractive in non-Western cultures. Increasing th e averageness of individual faces, by warping those faces towards an averag ed composite of the same race and sex, increased the attractiveness of both Chinese (experiment 1) and Japanese (experiment 2) faces, for Chinese and Japanese participants, respectively. Decreasing averageness by moving the f aces away from an average shape decreased attractiveness. We also manipulat ed the symmetry of Japanese faces by blending each original face with its m irror image to create perfectly symmetric versions. Japanese raters preferr ed the perfectly symmetric versions to the original faces (experiment 2). T hese findings show that preferences for facial averageness and symmetry are not restricted to Western cultures, consistent with the view that they are biologically based. Interestingly, it made little difference whether avera geness was manipulated by using own-race or other-race averaged composites and there was no preference for own-race averaged composites over other-rac e or mixed-race composites (experiment 1). We discuss the implications of t hese results for understanding what makes average faces attractive. We also discuss some limitations of our studies, and consider other lines of conve rging evidence that may help determine whether preferences for average and symmetric faces are biologically based.