Averageness

Gillian Rhodes and Tanya Tremewan. "Averageness, Exaggeration, and Facial Attractiveness." Psychological Science Vol. 7 No. 2 March 1996: pp.105-110. Print

Inspired by and articles written by Langlois and Roggman in 1990 that proposed that averageness is attractive, Rhodes and Tremewan set out to do their own experiments. In that article Langlois and Roggman used computerized versions of Galton's(1878) photographic averaging procedure to produce facial composites. Which is basically just laying one picture on top of another and the more common features with stack up more and become more pronounced.

In the beginning of the article the authors introduce several ideas and hypothesis on why facial physical attractiveness may me important. Some of the ideas were proposed by Langlos and Roggman when trying to make sense of earlier studies by Barash and Dobzhansky. There was an idea that averageness is a process of natural selection, but neither evolutionary or psychological tendencies points towards averageness. For example, in evolutionary terms, a more physically strong on the extreme side should be considered more attractive with the potential ability be a better protector or hunter. And certainly that may be the case with body types to a certain extent but that does not account for facial extremities.

In the experiments in this articles demonstrates that averageness when it comes to facial structures are more preferred and considered attractive in the students that were studied.