Associations of Facial Proportionality, Attractiveness, and Character Traits

Abstract

Background: Facial proportionality and symmetry are positively associated with perceived levels of facial attractiveness. Objective: The aims of this study were to confirm and extend the association of proportionality with perceived levels of attractiveness and character traits and determine differences in attractiveness and character ratings between "anomalous" and "typical" faces using a large dataset. Methods: Ratings of 597 unique individuals from the Chicago Face Database were used. A formula was developed as a proxy of relative horizontal proportionality, where a proportionality score of "0" indicated perfect proportionality and more negative scores indicated less proportionality. Faces were categorized as "anomalous" or "typical" by 2 independent reviewers based on physical features. Results: Across the ratings for all faces, Spearman correlations revealed greater proportionality was associated with attractiveness (ρ = 0.292, P < 0.001) and trustworthiness (ρ = 0.193, P < 0.001), while lesser proportionality was associated with impressions of anger (ρ = 0.132, P = 0.001), dominance (ρ = 0.259, P < 0.001), and threateningness (ρ = 0.234, P < 0.001). Mann-Whitney U tests revealed the typical cohort had significantly higher levels of proportionality (-13.98 versus -15.14, P = 0.030) and ratings of attractiveness (3.39 versus 2.99, P < 0.001) and trustworthiness (3.48 versus 3.35, P < 0.001). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that facial proportionality is not only significantly associated with higher ratings of attractiveness, but also associated with judgements of trustworthiness.Proportionality plays a role in evoking negative attributions of personality characteristics to people with facial anomalies.

Hairline Correction by Hair Transplantation for Reducing Apparent Face Length in Long Face Females

“…3 In addition, we found that increased representation of the middle one-third of the face was associated with higher ratings of attractiveness, trustworthiness, and femininity. 3 These results may indeed substantiate female hairline augmentation as the most efficacious change in facial anatomy for mitigating aesthetic concerns with "long face morphology," 1 although we recognize that cross-cultural differences may exist when making character inferences based on facial morphology.We were hoping the authors could comment on future directions for their investigation. Have the authors considered correlating changes in vertical anatomic measurements with patient and surgeon satisfaction ratings?…”

Visual Attention, Bias, and Social Dispositions Toward People With Facial Anomalies

“…Eye-tracking is one such mechanism of objectively characterizing craniofacial anatomy, 35 in addition to other mechanisms including crowdsourcing 36,37 and soft tissue analysis. 38 However, visual attention data have not been studied alongside tests evaluating biases or social dispositions and may provide additional insight into the perception of those with facial anomalies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether interactions between biases and social characteristics with preoperative or postoperative status influence visual attention in laypeople toward those with facial anomalies.…”

“…Gaze patterns and visual attention have previously been used to study laypeople's perceptions of craniofacial anomalies. Eye-tracking is one such mechanism of objectively characterizing craniofacial anatomy, 35 in addition to other mechanisms including crowdsourcing 36,37 and soft tissue analysis 38 . However, visual attention data have not been studied alongside tests evaluating biases or social dispositions and may provide additional insight into the perception of those with facial anomalies.…”

Real Face Analysis of Masculinity-Femininity, Facial Ratios, and Attractiveness

“…Ratios adapted from previous studies [16][17][18] were used to characterize relative representation of facial features, where higher ratio scores indicated increased facial feature representation. For example: nasal width ratio ¼ interalar width face width  100…”