Why You Find Someone Attractive (When Others Don't)

You think they're the most beautiful person in the room. Your best friend takes one look and shrugs. Same face, same room, same light, so who's seeing it wrong? From a Victorian who blended criminals' faces and got a handsome one, to identical twins who don't share their taste, to a student who went from a 3 to a 7 without changing her face: the surprising science of why beauty is half shared and half written by your life. 0:00 Same face, different eyes 0:59 The eye of the beholder 2:12 The handsome criminal 3:16 A face you've never met 4:12 Only half true 4:46 Same genes, different taste 6:06 The faces that changed 7:10 The first-day photo 8:12 Why only you Sources (full list in the project's SOURCES.md): Darwin, C. (1871). The Descent of Man, vol. II, ch. XIX. Galton, F. (1878/1879). Composite portraits. Nature 18:97–100; J. Anthropological Institute 8:132–144. Langlois, J. H., & Roggman, L. A. (1990). Attractive faces are only average. Psychological Science 1:115–121. Slater, A., et al. (2000). Newborn infants' preference for attractive faces. Infancy 1:265–274. Rhodes, G., et al. (2003). Fitting the mind to the world. Psychological Science 14:558–566. Pallett, P. M., Link, S., & Lee, K. (2010). New "golden" ratios for facial beauty. Vision Research 50:149–154. Hönekopp, J. (2006). Once more: is beauty in the eye of the beholder? JEP: HPP 32:199–209. Germine, L., et al. (2015). Individual aesthetic preferences for faces are shaped mostly by environments, not genes. Current Biology 25:2684–2689. Moreland, R. L., & Beach, S. R. (1992). Exposure effects in the classroom. J. Experimental Social Psychology 28:255–276. Mita, T. H., Dermer, M., & Knight, J. (1977). Reversed facial images and the mere-exposure hypothesis. JPSP 35:597–601. Kniffin, K. M., & Wilson, D. S. (2004). The effect of nonphysical traits on the perception of physical attractiveness. Evolution and Human Behavior 25:88–101. Eastwick, P. W., & Hunt, L. L. (2014). Relational mate value. JPSP 106:728–751. Epley, N., & Whitchurch, E. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall. PSPB 34:1159–1170. Hunt, L. L., Eastwick, P. W., & Finkel, E. J. (2015). Leveling the playing field. Psychological Science 26:1046–1053. Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What is beautiful is good. JPSP 24:285–290. Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions. Psychological Science 17:592–598. Subscribe for more stories like this.