Study Shows Female Faces Rated Higher, Gap Fades by 80
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- The study compiled the world’s largest dataset on facial attractiveness, pulling 52 studies from 76 countries, with over 1.5 million ratings of 17,000 faces by nearly 30,000 raters.
- Female faces were rated more attractive than about 60 % of male faces, a gap that was strongest in Western cultures and persisted across sexual orientations.
- Women gave the highest attractiveness ratings to other women and the lowest to men, while men’s ratings showed a smaller gender bias.
- The attractiveness gap narrowed steadily with age and was essentially gone by the time faces reached their 80s, as facial structural differences (rectangular vs. rounded) diminished.
- Dr Eugen Wassiliwizky, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, noted the effect is “super robust” across cultures and suggested rounder (baby‑like) faces may drive the preference.
- Self‑ratings by men and women eliminated the gender gap, indicating the bias is present only in cross‑gender evaluations.
Why it matters: The findings give researchers a massive cross‑cultural dataset that confirms a persistent gender attractiveness bias while showing it fades with age, offering a robust empirical basis for debates on evolutionary versus cultural origins of beauty standards. It also shows that self‑ratings eliminate the gap, suggesting personal perception differs from cross‑gender judgments.
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