What Is Average and What Is Not Average About Attractive Faces?

Authors

Judith H. Langlois
Lori A. Roggman, Utah State UniversityFollow
Lisa Musselman

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Psychological Science

Volume

5

Issue

4

Publisher

SAGE

Publication Date

7-1994

First Page

214

Last Page

220

Abstract

We reported in this journal (Langlois & Roggman, 1990) findings showing that attractive faces are those that represent the mathematical average of faces in a population These findings were intriguing because they provided a parsimonious definition of facial attractiveness and because they supported explanations of attractiveness from the point of view of both evolutionary and cognitive-prototype theory Since our 1990 report, several alternative explanations of our findings have been offered In this article, we show that none of these alternatives explains our results adequately

Comments

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Recommended Citation

Langlois, J. H., Roggman, L. A., & Musselman, L. (1994). What's average and what's not about attractive faces. Psychological Science, 5, 214-220.