She is not a beauty even when she smiles: Possible evolutionary basis for a relationship between facial attractiveness and hemispheric specialization

The asymmetrical status of facial beauty has rarely been investigated. We studied positive facial characteristics, attractiveness and smiling, through the use of left-left and right-right composites of unfamiliar faces of women and men with natural expressions. Results showed that women's right-right composites were judged significantly more attractive than left-left composites while there was no left-right difference in men's composites (Experiment 1). On the other hand, left-left composites were judged to have more pronounced smiling expressions than right-right composites in both women's and men's faces (Experiment 2). The results confirm previous findings for leftward facial expressiveness and show for the first time asymmetry in facial attractiveness and a difference in its manifestation in women's and men's faces. The findings have biological implications for the relationship between the appearance of the sides of the face and hemispheric specialization. The organization of beauty in the human face may have been shaped by evolutionary pressures on facial asymmetries, especially as they pertain to mate selection.

[1]  Marie T Banich,et al.  Asymmetry of perception in free viewing of chimeric faces , 1983, Brain and Cognition.

[2]  M. Cunningham.  Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness: quasi-experiments on the sociobiology of female facial beauty , 1986 .

[3]  P Bakan,et al.  Visual asymmetry in perception of faces. , 1973, Neuropsychologia.

[4]  N. Humphrey,et al.  Turning the Left Cheek , 1973, Nature.

[5]  R. Yin,et al.  Face recognition by brain-injured patients: a dissociable ability? , 1970, Neuropsychologia.

[6]  D. Symons,et al.  The psychology of human mate preferences , 1989, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[7]  D. Buss.  The evolution of human intrasexual competition: tactics of mate attraction. , 1988, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[8]  D. Buss,et al.  Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures , 1989, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[9]  D. Kimura.  Sex differences in the brain. , 1992, Scientific American.

[10]  H. Ellis,et al.  Perceiving and remembering faces , 1983 .

[11]  C. Darwin.  The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex: INDEX , 1871 .

[12]  D. Zaidel,et al.  Sex of the Face in Western Art: Left and Right in Portraits , 1994 .

[13]  Richard J. Davidson,et al.  Affect, cognition, and hemispheric specialization. , 1985 .

[14]  D. Zaidel,et al.  Memory for faces in epileptic children before and after brain surgery. , 1994, Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.

[15]  M. Hauser.  Right hemisphere dominance for the production of facial expression in monkeys. , 1993, Science.