Average faces

Aunt Dora Baggins

Aunt Dora Baggins

Immortal
I ran across this link through an article in Science News.

(It may be slow loading. The link is http://www.faceresearch.org/demos/average )

It seems that when researchers used digital wizardry to modify photographs of faces, the ones that people found the most attractive were those that were digital "averages" of many faces. The site lets you select as many faces as you like from among their list and average them to see the result. What's amazing is how stunningly beautiful the result is. It seems to be especially beautiful when the original faces are all different races and both men and women. To me the result looks like an angel face.

I wish we had a way to do it for all of us here on TORn. What a great aggregate we'd be!
 
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Someone did an experiment where they showed people a film that included characters that were "morphed" images of their own face with someone else's.

I don't recall all the details, but the main thing I got out of it was that people would respond to the "morphed" image as if it was their own face, and that they also ended feeling empathy/connection with the other person who's image had been combined with theirs. The scientist who was interviewed thought it helped explain how and why empathy works, and that this process could help break down barriers between people based on stereotypes.

Thanks for the link to the neat site -- it is so fascinating what these kinds of experiments tell us about ourselves!
 
I cannot believe how, well, beautiful the morphed images look. As LRon pointed out, it's likely because the asymmetrical differences are cancelled out in the morph.

I have been just doing girl-girl combinations; I have to experiment now with two different sexes...
 
People do prefer symmetry. And if you use mirror images to make a symmetric face, people seem to prefer a face made out of two right sides to two left sides, for some reason.
 
Those children are very beautiful.
Mixed genes are good. Mixing the gene pool adds strengths, and helps safeguard our humanity from whatever adverse effects the environment throws at us.
 
New Scientist: How Your Looks Betray Your Personality.

Isn't this fascinating?

I'm glad scientists are researching this. Maybe they'll be able to help people with prosopagnosia, who have trouble remembering faces, and people with autism, who have trouble recognizing facial expressions.

I was also wondering if this could help with casting actors. Like, say you want to cast someone who looks very trustworthy. Could they make a computer program that scans a zillion headshots, and picks out all the ones who look trustworthy? You'd still need to audition them to see if they could act, but maybe it would save time in narrowing down the choices, and draw attention to some unknowns who have the right look.

Like most human traits, faces are such an interesting mix of inborn and acquired. I try to remind myself that wrinkles may be inevitable, but I'd rather have smile lines than frown lines. [:)]
 
I don't think they've made their case on "averageness" vs. "symmetry," though. Elsewhere, they acknowledge that "attractiveness" trumps "averageness," but the examples they show to demonstrate that "averageness" trumps "symmetry" also differ in features related to "attractiveness." My bet is that the advantage of "averageness" is due almost entirely to "symmetry," as previous research has suggested (well, that and smooth skin!).

The averaging tool is fun to play with, though. One thing struck me as odd -- there wasn't as much variation in nose shape among the photos as I would have expected, and certain facial types didn't seem to be represented at all, even considering that the photos are limited to young people of about the same age. Stacking the deck?
 
I played around with the faces for a while and I really felt that the 'combined' faces were kind of bland and boring. Unobjectionable yet immediately forgettable. Granted the digitization tends to eliminate or minimize facial expressions, but more than that I just found the averaged faces were, well, average, and non-memorable.

I wouldn't want everyone to look like these 'averaged' faces. After a while, they all look the same.

I'll take asymmetrical individuality any day, thanks [;)].
 
the relationship between hemispherical (brain) and facial asymmetry which in the least is associated with emotion. It seems it is hard to expect symmetry where the analytical and emotional/intuitive sides split and play oppositely on the face Here is just a little of an article found here:

http://www.scipress.org/journals/forma/pdf/1502/15020187.pdf

Keywords: Human Face, Right and Left Asymmetry, Emotional Expression, Cerebral
Hemisphere
Abstract. Using image processing technique and newly developed cognitive evaluation
method, asymmetry between right and left hemiface of human concerning the emotional
function could be detected. Right-left asymmetry in emotional expression could be
quantitatively evaluated by indices of richness and plainness scores. Most right-handed
peoples (8 out of 10) showed positive and high richness scores indicating that the rich
emotional expression is found in the left hemiface higher degree than in the right
hemiface. The relevance of this result to the laterality of cerebral hemispheres in
emotional function was discussed.
 
I don't think the faces you get to choose from are that good looking? Am I being too particular? [blush]
I picked a few to "average", but the resulting face was pretty bland.
 
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