The Role of Art Expertise and Symmetry on Facial Aesthetic Preferences

Abstract

Humans, like other species, have a preference for symmetrical visual stimuli, a preference that is influenced by factors such as age, sex, and artistic training. In particular, artistic training seems to decrease the rejection of asymmetry in abstract stimuli. However, it is not known whether the same trend would be observed in relation to concrete stimuli such as human faces. In this article, we investigated the role of expertise in visual arts, music, and dance, in the perceived beauty and attractiveness of human faces with different asymmetries. With this objective, the beauty and attractiveness of 100 photographs of faces with different degrees of asymmetry were evaluated by 116 participants with different levels of art expertise. Expertise in visual arts and dance was associated with the extent to which facial asymmetry influenced the beauty ratings assigned to the faces. The greater the art expertise in visual arts and dance, the more indifferent to facial asymmetry the participant was to evaluate beauty. The same effect was not found for music and neither for attractiveness ratings. These findings are important to help understand how face aesthetic evaluation is modified by artistic training and the difference between beauty and attractiveness evaluations.