IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0245557.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Facial shape affects self-perceived facial attractiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Georgios Kanavakis
  • Demetrios Halazonetis
  • Christos Katsaros
  • Nikolaos Gkantidis

Abstract

Facial appearance expresses numerous cues about physical qualities as well as psychosocial and personality traits. Attractive faces are recognized clearly when seen and are often viewed advantageously in professional, social and romantic relationships. On the other hand, self-perceived attractiveness is not well understood and has been mainly attributed to psychological and cognitive factors. Here we use 3-dimensional facial surface data of a large young adult population (n = 601) to thoroughly assess the effect of facial shape on self-perceived facial attractiveness. Our results show that facial shape had a measurable effect on self-perception of facial attractiveness in both sexes. In females, self-perceived facial attractiveness was linked to decreased facial width, fuller anterior part of the lower facial third and more pronounced middle forehead and root of the nose. Males favored a well-defined chin, flatter cheeks and zygomas, and more pronounced eyebrow ridges, nose and middle forehead. The findings of this study support the notion that self-perceived facial attractiveness is not only motivated by psychological traits, but objectively measured phenotypic traits also contribute significantly. The role of social stereotypes for facial attractiveness in modern society is also inferred and discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Georgios Kanavakis & Demetrios Halazonetis & Christos Katsaros & Nikolaos Gkantidis, 2021. "Facial shape affects self-perceived facial attractiveness," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(2), pages 1-17, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0245557
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0245557
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245557
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0245557&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0245557?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0245557. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.