Facial Beauty and the Correlation of Associated Attributes: An Empirical Aesthetic Database Study

Prateush Singh; Liam Birkett; Shivani Dhar; Eva Krumhuber; Afshin Mosahebi; Allan Ponniah

doi:10.1097/GOX.0000000000005382

Facial Beauty and the Correlation of Associated Attributes: An Empirical Aesthetic Database Study

Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2024 Jan 10;12(1):e5382. doi: 10.1097/GOX.0000000000005382. eCollection 2024 Jan.

Authors

Prateush Singh^{1

2}, Liam Birkett^{1

2}, Shivani Dhar^{1

2}, Eva Krumhuber³, Afshin Mosahebi^{1

2}, Allan Ponniah^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ From the Department of Surgery, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
² Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Royal London Hospital, United Kingdom.
³ Department of Clinical Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Background: The pursuit of understanding facial beauty has been the subject of scientific interest since time immemorial. How beauty is associated with other perceived attributes that affect human interaction remains elusive. This article aims to explore how facial attractiveness correlates with health, happiness, femininity, and perceived age. We review the existing literature and report an empirical study using expert raters.

Methods: A peer-reviewed database of 2870 aesthetic female faces with a global ethnic distribution was created. Twenty-one raters were asked to score frontal images on the attributes of health, happiness, femininity, perceived age, and attractiveness, on a Likert scale of 0-100.

Results: Pearson correlation coefficients ("r") were calculated to correlate attributes, with multiple regression analyses and P values calculated. Strong positive correlation was found between attractiveness and health (r = 0.61, P < 0.05), attractiveness and femininity (r = 0.7, P < 0.05), and health and femininity (r = 0.57, P < 0.05); medium positive correlation between health and happiness (r = 0.31, P < 0.05); and small positive correlation between happiness and femininity (r = 0.21, P < 0.05). A neutral relationship was observed between perceived age and happiness (0.01, P = 0.75), and medium negative correlation between perceived age and attractiveness (-0.32, P < 0.05), health (-0.36, P < 0.05), and femininity (-0.31, P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Our study illustrates a positive correlation between the positive attributes of health, happiness, femininity and attractiveness, with a negative correlation of all characteristics with increasing perceived age. This provides insight into the complexity of human interaction and provides a holistic view of attraction as being a gateway to the reflexive perception of other attributes. The implications encourage an aesthetic focus on facial reconstruction.