The myth of facial symmetry
If you ask people what makes a face attractive, many will say it's symmetry , because apparently that shows whether the person is healthy, i.e. free of parasites and genetic defects. But it turns out the common wisdom is wrong. Sure, gross asymmetry — what we'd consider a deformity — is unattractive. But in wealthy countries that level of asymmetry is extremely rare, since most cases are corrected with cosmetic surgery at a young age. So, what makes people think that symmetry is attractive? Well, decades ago, some researchers took pictures of female faces, cut them down the middle, and mirrored both the left and right sides. This produced two perfectly symmetrical versions of each face. What they found was that for most of the faces, a symmetric version was a bit more attractive than the original. Not always, but more often that you'd expect by chance. So, on average , the symmetric faces were a bit more attractive. And this study got a lot of publicity. But the effect