Comparing theory-driven and data-driven attractiveness models using images of real women's faces

Citation

Holzleitner IJ, Lee AJ, Hahn AC, Kandrik M, Bovet J, Renoult JP, Simmons D, Garrod O, DeBruine LM & Jones BC (2019) Comparing theory-driven and data-driven attractiveness models using images of real women's faces. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 45 (12), pp. 1589-1595. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000685

Abstract
Facial attractiveness plays a critical role in social interaction, influencing many different social outcomes. However, the factors that influence facial attractiveness judgments remain relatively poorly understood. Here, we used a sample of 594 young adult female face images to compare the performance of existing theory-driven models of facial attractiveness and a data-driven (i.e., theory-neutral) model. Our data-driven model and a theory-driven model including various traits commonly studied in facial attractiveness research (asymmetry, averageness, sexual dimorphism, body mass index, and representational sparseness) performed similarly well. By contrast, univariate theory-driven models performed relatively poorly. These results (1) highlight the utility of data driven models of facial attractiveness and (2) suggest that theory-driven research on facial attractiveness would benefit from greater adoption of multivariate approaches, rather than the univariate approaches that they currently almost exclusively employ.

Keywords
mate preferences; principal component analysis; face perception; face processing

Journal
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance: Volume 45, Issue 12