Female facial beauty: The fertility hypothesis

Johnston, Victor S.

doi:10.1075/pc.8.1.06joh

Article published In: Facial Information Processing: A multidisciplinary perspective
Itiel E. Dror and Sarah V. Stevenage
[Pragmatics & Cognition 8:1] 2000
► pp. 107–122

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Female facial beauty

The fertility hypothesis

Victor S. Johnston | New Mexico State University, Las Cruces

Published online: 17 May 2000

https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.8.1.06joh

Prior research on facial beauty has suggested that the average female face in a population is perceived to be the most attractive face. This finding, however, is based on an image processing methodology that appears to be flawed. An alternative method for generating attractive faces is described and the findings using this procedure are compared with the reports of other experimenters. The results suggest that (1) beautiful female faces are not average, but vary from the average in a systematic manner, and (2) female beauty can best be explained by a sexual selection viewpoint, whereby selection favors cues that are reliable indicators of fertility.

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