When we are referring to symmetry in a person’s face, it obviously pertains to how well the left side matches correspondingly with the right.
So we have this left/right symmetry.
However, does it include everything (literally)? Or is it just the bone structure of the person’s face?
For example, let’s say a kid’s left/right facial symmetry in terms of his bone structure is 100% (the bones on the left side of his face completely match the bones on his right). But he’s got terrible acne. So his spots seem to make his face more distorted than it really is.
Does that mean we have to account for all the spots on each side of his face, or ignore them (and all skin blemishes/ageing signs etc.) altogether?
When we refer to facial symmetry, are we only talking about bone structure?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term before. Faces are typically not symmetrical. We perceive them to be, but In art class we were shown some pictures of faces, that, while having no obvious deformities seemed “wrong” for some reason.
We dound out later that the pictures had been altered. The right side of each face had been duplicated and reversed. Those faces were perfectly symmetrical.
I don’t know but I’d always had the impression that it was to do with facial features and bone structure. Say, a crooked smile, one eyebrow lifting higher than the other, one ear sticking out a little more, a semi absorbed unborn twin growing out of your neck, that kind of thing.
I hear that so called “attractive” faces tend to be quite assymetrical.
I’d say that it refers both to bone structure and surface features. Bear in mind that skin quality affects our perception of beauty, so somebody with good clear skin will generally be perceived as being more attractive, and asymmetric blemishes will also affect that perception.
Of course, in the OP you don’t really state in what context you’re referring to facial symmetry, so I suppose the real answer to your question is “it depends”.
When you take a bunch of people’s faces and have people rate their attractiveness, the faces rates most attractive tend to be highly symmetrical.
In addition, there’s a well duplicated result with regards to rating the attractiveness of faces - if you take a bunch of people’s faces of the same sex and blend them all together with morphing software, the composite result is consistently rated more attractive than any one of the “ingredient” faces.
Cite:
Example: http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_II/Psychologie/Psy_II/beautycheck/english/missgermany/missgermany.htm
One result of this face blending is that the composite face is more symmetrical than the ingredient faces. However, as picunurse pointed out, creating mirror-image faces from half-faces produces a disturbing result. So what is going on?
According to Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff (book on the evolution and science of attraction), our facial expressions are actually asymmetric. So by simply flipping the left hand side of a face over to mirror it and replace the right hand side with it, you get an unnatural facial expression that look “wrong.” But if you flip the left hand side over to mirror it, average it with the right hand side via morphing software, and then make a symmetrical face out of your “averaged” mirror-left side and right side, it makes a more attractive version of “you”. (And if you do this trick with really attractive people, the images look the same before and after the exercise. I’ve seen it done quite strikingly with Kylie Minogue’s face.)
Back to the OP - the German site referenced above (it’s written in English) performed a few experiments to determine whether the higher rated attractiveness of the composite faces was from the proportions or from improved skin appearance caused by the blending process. (See the links on “Average faces” and “Reformed facial shapes”.) They concluded that the improved skin appearance was the governing factor, although I wasn’t personally that convinced.
In a literal sense, facial symmetry should cover everything and include symmetrical moles and acne. But in these composite face studies the skin tends to become very uniform and so the effect of asymmetric skin features is removed.
Also, in the facial rating studies that I’ve seen, the images used tended to have relatively good skin. So I guess you can make the assumption that in the context of studies of facial attractiveness and symmetry, the symmetry refers more to the underlying structure. Skin blemishes introduce an extra variable that would make it difficult to be confident in your results.
I don’t think so. Someone with a “quite assymetrical” face would resemble Quadsimodo.
As matt explains above, in general the more symmetrical a face is the more attractive people consider it. However, I have read (and this may be what you were thinking of) that symmetry will only get you so far. A symmetrical face is pretty, but it seems that to be considered a really striking beauty you need to have some slighty unusual feature. Consider, say, Cindy Crawford, who isn’t really my type but is unquestionably one of the most popular and successful models ever. Would she have been more successful without her famous mole? Or with two mirror-image moles, one on each side of her face?
In Crawford’s case the most obvious asymmetry is on her skin’s surface, but there are other famous beauties with quirky eyebrows, wonky eyes, etc. Looking at the “Miss Germany” photos in matt’s link I agree that the computer generated face is prettier than the photos of the real beauty queens, but I think it would be more beautiful still if it weren’t quite so perfectly symmetrical. Imagine her with a slightly crooked smile!
Getting back to the OP, if I were drawing a model’s face for an art class or something I would probably use the term “symmetrical” to refer primarily to the bone structure and placement of the features. I think I would ignore minor skin discolorations or the odd pimple. However, any skin condition that had an obvious effect on the shape of the face would of course affect its symmetry.