Physical attractiveness: Interpersonal and intrapersonal variability of assessments

Abstract

On the basis of face photographs, a team of 50 male judges assessed the physical attractiveness of 64 young women, giving them scores according to two scales (0/1 and 1–10). The attractiveness of each woman was then calculated as the mean value of assessments of all observers. The ratio of intra‐ to interpersonal variance of assessments was the measure of divergence of the observers’ opinions (and its complement to unit was the measure of consistency). The correlation between assessments of attractiveness and measurements of the morphological features of the women was calculated as well as the correlation between the morphological features of the observers and the features of women regarded by them as the most attractive. The main conclusions are: Attractiveness is not solely a function of individual tastes. About 25 per cent of the assessments’ variance can be explained by common opinion of the judges. Higher assessments of attractiveness are correlated with modal variants of morphological features of assessed women. There was no correlation between morphological features of the observers and the features of the women rated most attractive by those observers.