Women's Attractiveness Judged by Software

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to Haaretz, an Israeli team of computer scientists has developed software that ranks facial attractiveness of women. Instead of identifying basic facial characteristics, this software has been designed to make aesthetic judgments — after training. The lead researcher said this program 'constitutes a substantial advance in the development of artificial intelligence.' It is interesting to note that the researchers focused on women only. Apparently, men' faces are more difficult to grade."

Comments

more average is more attractive

[Noodles]

I saw an article in a science journal years ago that showed photos of women averaged together. The more photos in the average, the more attractive the final photo became. The conclusion was the more 'average' the woman looked, the more attractive she was. Makes sense to me.

Even beyond that...

[SatanicPuppy]

Even beyond the very real problems listed above, I'm not aware of any actual empirical standard of beauty. All you can point to is a general average of perceptions of attractiveness, and even that is far from foolproof as evidenced by the thousands of women who actively try to personify that average, and end up looking subtly hideous (a la Anna Nicole Smith).

In the end, it all comes down to individual perception. Sit ten guys down with thirty pictures, and you're going to get 10 different #1's. Maybe you can teach a program to be able to say who it thinks is hot, whatever use that is. Or you could write a program that would allow a person to rate a hundred or so pictures, so that you could run a dating service that automatically pairs you up with people it thinks you'll find attractive...That's the only use I can come up with.

Re:Even beyond that...

[debrain]

Attractive people are treated better from a young age and, knowingly or unknowingly, they leverage this asset to get what they want. All beautiful women who have been stalked, abused, or raped because they are physically attractive, may beg to differ. Also, not being taken seriously because you're a "barbie doll" is a less-than-subtle discrimination permeating Western society. Attractiveness, like all things, has good and bad points. It is fallacious to say it is an asset without costs.

You may be interested in reading about the "evolutionarily deceptive" teenage years, where soon-to-be-ugly people appear attractive to seduce a mate, and soon-to-be-beautiful people repel mates so as to avoid the wrong one.

Symmetry

[Reality Master 101]

I read an article a while back that made the point that one of the biggest factors in attractiveness was symmetry. The "perfect" face doesn't have any features out of alignment. There was another study that made the point that "averaging" faces produced more attractiveness, but this was actually the wrong conclusion. It was the averaging process that smoothed out features into perfect alignment.

Symmetry actually makes sense. The more messed up someone's face is from ideal, the worse their genetics could be. Of course, there are other factors such as shiny hair, clear skin, sharp cheekbones, fitness, which all factor back to health.

Skin smoothness

[superstition222]

The theory from some is that this averaging resulted in an illusory correlation between average and beautiful due to the fact that the averaging process improved the appearance/smoothness of skin. People apparently really really like good skin.

Re:requires external criteria

[jollyreaper]

According to some research, people tend to prefer their own race's looks, so Cubans are likely to find cuban pool boys more compelling than Swedes. Obviously there are exceptions for exceptional beauties of both sexes. But, this is a general trend. For instance, I have seen a total of one Indian guy I found hot and one I found attractive. I have dealt with a lot of Indians. I also don't tend to find latinos compelling, but there are always exceptions. I like young white guys the most, and this is likely due to genetics. One study found that people are better at differentiating between the facial features of their racial group. This can be due to increased day-to-day exposure to those features, but also can be due to genes. This can go both ways. While there is a degree of comfort for selecting mates within one's own racial subgroup, there's also a trend towards being attracted to exotics, i.e. those outside of the subgroup. This sort of desire has been postulated as an evolutionary adaptation to keep genes from becoming stagnant. I am not sure if this still in the realm of speculation or if there has been any experimental verification. Of course, culture can also completely fuck up a given subject's appreciation of beauty. Just look at how standard African features have been looked down upon in females. Look at any black couple on television and you'll see that the man may have markedly pronounced African features but the women will always be of mixed race, skin tending towards coffee color but facial features all comfortably Caucasian. I very much doubt this is by chance.

Something ommitted

[Pojut]

Something I have noticed is that the more intelligent a woman is, the more attractive she looks when showing certain emotions.

An intelligent woman looks highly attractive when confused...you can almost see the gears working in her head, trying to figure it out. An unintelligent woman just has a dumb confused look on her face.

From what I have seen, intelligent women tend to not necessarily have more attractive facial features, but a more attractive way of showing their emotion and reaction to things. Not something that is commonly thought about.

Re:requires external criteria

[value_added]

That's because male attractiveness is graded on a curve, the curve set by wealth, power, and social position.

I'm not an expert of male attractiveness, nor do I play one on Slashdot, but I imagine similar factors (absence of damage, proportionality of features, symmetry on the vertical plane, etc.) would play a similar enough role. That said, there have been plenty of studies showing that the "attractiveness" of a male's face corresponds to the menstrual cycle of the female: during ovulation, the "rugged and handsome" look is preferrable to "nice and well-shaved" whereas the inverse is generally true at other times.

As for "wealthy and powerful", I guess that could similarly depend on the financial and social status of the female. I prefer to consider it a truism in the same way that in the wild, it's typically the biggest, strongest, or the one with the most goodies that gets the opportunity to mate.

A side note for anyone cherishing the notion that everything is relative or personal, and there can be no standard of attractiveness. Even across disparate cultures where such things can run into the extremes, the attractiveness value of facial symmetry, to take one example, remains universal. I remember a PBS program on the subject years back that examined the faces of famous movie stars. Turns out by taking a ruler to the face of someone like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, you'll discover both have nearly perfectly symmetrical faces. I imagine one could conclude there's some form of Golden Ratio that applies, particularly to body shapes like those of Angeline Jolie. ;-)

Re:Woman scientists will retaliate...

[Maxo-Texas]

Your theory sounds lovely-- I'm just saying what I've seen in practice.

It takes time to build a friendship, then a sexual interest, then a romantic relationship-- the guys I know who have stable relationships do not let their women hang around alone with other men. When their feelers go up they chase the guy off- usually just by saying very mildly that they are not comfortable with the situation.

In my case, they had a business relationship first.. then started meeting for lunch-- then I stopped being copied on emails-- then his wife stopped being copied on emails-- then they acknowledged something deeper than friendship (this is about 5 months in-- like I said, I got to read every email from both of them once I stopped the blind trust thing), then they started having sex-- then she had some work conferences (i.e. trips to his ranch)-- (now we are at 7 months)-- then they had a full out affair- he dropped hundreds if not thousands on jewelry, flowers, dinners and THEN he found out about me (she told him there was no one else-- he was married so there was no conflict right away) -- THEN she fought him for three months to keep both of us-- finally she told me and tried to keep both of us but as you would imagine, she was 60% him / 40% me and sliding towards him by then or else she would have cut him off instead of trying to keep both of us.

You are right- we are all individuals who control our own destinies and we have no strong control others. But it take time to slide from loving someone to being willing to lie and betray them. If you catch them early, then you can stop things before they are too far along.

If he had not been so damn wealthy I do not think it would have been an issue. It was like the second sentence out of her mouth when she broke the news to me. The universe had sent a wealthy man to take care of her. It was right after she said crying that she had had an affair with someone and she didn't want to lose me.

And I make a good income and wasn't stingy on sharing it and had proposed. She was gloriously happy while at the same time she was being a complete skank. She and he started out with the idea that it would be a discrete little side thing that they would do during the day and "no one would get hurt". His family is hurt... I'm torn all to hell... his wife is hurt. The two of them lied to everyone. I damn near had a nervous breakdown over it because there was almost no warning. I knew she was under stress and consoled her and she told me it was about her business- I trusted her completely at that point. The stress was apparently really that she was fighting with him to keep it all secret and under wraps.

I wouldn't be posting but she tried to open up contact with me again last week after I had successfully ended contact with her for several weeks and that attempt opened up all the pain again.