Study: Female faces rated more attractive than male faces across cultures

The Story

A new study compiling more than 1.5 million facial attractiveness ratings from 76 countries found that female faces are consistently rated more attractive than male faces, even by other women. The perceived gap declines steadily from age 18 and nearly disappears by age 80. The research, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, confirms a “gender attractiveness gap” that had been observed informally but not systematically tested.

Key Facts

• Researchers compiled the world’s largest dataset on facial attractiveness from 52 studies in 76 countries.
• The dataset contained more than 1.5 million ratings of 17,000 faces from nearly 30,000 raters.
• The average female face was rated more attractive than about 60% of male faces.
• The gap was strongest in the West and varied slightly with sexual orientation, but was evident across heterosexual, gay, bisexual, and lesbian raters.
• The gap disappeared when men and women rated themselves.
• Some of the effect is driven by sex differences in facial structure: men have more rectangular faces, women more rounded faces; both men and women tended to find rounder faces more attractive.
• The preference for female over male faces dropped steadily from age 18 until vanishing at about age 80.
• The study does not explain the reason for the preference, but lead researcher Dr Eugen Wassiliwizky stated that a purely cultural explanation is unlikely given the effect’s cross-cultural consistency.

Conflicting Reports

No conflicting reports identified in the source article.

Still Unclear

The study does not identify why female faces are consistently rated more attractive. Wassiliwizky suggested it could be due to hundreds of thousands of years of sexual selection or because rounded faces resemble babies’ faces, but said those inferences cannot be drawn from the data.

Misconceptions

No widespread misconceptions addressed in the source article.

Key Figures

• Dr Eugen Wassiliwizky, research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Germany.
• Susan Sontag, American writer referenced for her 1972 essay “The Double Standard of Aging.”

Sources: The Guardian