An Expert’s Guide to Celebrity Faces - Issue 13: Symmetry
▻http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/an-experts-guide-to-celebrity-faces
You’ve heard it before: Symmetrical faces are more beautiful, healthy, and genetically fit than others. But this story misses some important details. For one thing, the human brain is not programmed to dwell on individual aspects of the face. Instead, says Margaret Livingstone, neurobiology professor at Harvard Medical School, we process faces holistically, rather than focusing on specific parts. What’s more, that holistic processing itself is asymmetrical, and scans from left to right. David Perrett, professor at St. Andrews University’s School of Psychology and Neuroscience, showed subjects blended faces, with the left half derived from a man and the right half from a woman.1 Very few people noticed that the two sides were different, but the majority still judged the face to be (...)