Why we find average faces the most attractive

We may put beautiful people on billboards, but it's the average looking we're drawn to, says Richard Stephens

Why might you be attracted to one face over another? It's an age-old question thought to be too subjective to be worth serious scientific scrutiny, until recently. The multimillion-pound cosmetics industry demonstrates the huge level of interest in how we look. But attractiveness is not, as you might at first think, linked with distinctiveness; it's actually the opposite.

While having a unique look hasn't harmed the career of, say, Lily Cole, studies have repeatedly shown that when it comes to which faces we prefer, we are more impressed by averageness. Researchers created artificial faces on a computer by combining photos of several people's faces to generate a composite, "average" image. In preference trials, these highly average faces were consistently rated most attractive. What's more, the more faces were used to build a composite face, the more attractive the composite face was judged to be.