
We recognize less attractive faces best - jamesbritt
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140204101714.htm
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daeken
I wonder if, rather than storing an "image" of a face, we store a sort of
error correction from a standard model. This is akin to probabilistic
compression, where you have a bitstream generator and then store a list of
where that bitstream is in error.

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zk00006
Nobody knows how brain works exactly, but I believe that some sort of
compression is there. This has been done in computer vision some time ago and
there is a nice application which essentially represents a face by 100
dimensional vector: www.facegen.com. Starting form average face, its possible
to get any face you like by varying those dimensions.

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gweinberg
"Beautiful people all look alike. Each ugly person is ugly in his own way."

\- Tolstoy

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lutusp
For the record, that's not actually what Tolstoy said. He actually said, “All
happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I only post this because some people who don't read very much might propagate
the prior non-quote and allow it to assume an authority through repetition
that it doesn't have.

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waqf
For the record, that's not actually what Tolstoy said either. He actually
wrote, «Всѣ счастливыя семьи похожи другъ на друга, каждая несчастливая семья
несчастлива по своему».

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diziet
To be very pedantic, the quote is what you'd quoted. In more modern russian it
would be: "Все счастливые семьи похожи друг на друга, каждая несчастливая
семья несчастлива по-своему."

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miga
Interesting contribution to psychology, since unknown faces are usually
considered most attractive when they are average but...

If you consider a small (or not so small) social group with a common knowledge
of a person considered as attractive, then you may find that people attribute
attractiveness with the _non-average_ merits displayed by that person - that
contradicts the theory that attractiveness with be _just_ average!

It is also sound to say that recognizable people that evoke a positive
reaction may feed the "attractiveness" recognition loop stronger...

BTW Which bright statistician discovers what is flawed in both the prevalent
"averaging" theory and the research mentioned in a link?

Hint: look for difference between "alien" or "unknown" faces, and faces of
those that are known - and thus whose attractiveness matters more to us.

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Goladus
_Interesting contribution to psychology, since unknown faces are usually
considered most attractive when they are average but..._

My understanding it's that the average of various traits that tend to be found
attractive, not "average faces." Faces that are average in every measured
trait are in fact very rare.

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gmays
So that's why everyone seems to recognize me.

That makes sense though. The more closely faces represent the golden ratio,
the more attractive they're judged to be. Therefore, the more similar they are
in that aspect, the more attractive they are. So there are a lot more ways to
be ugly that there are to be attractive.

That's interesting because familiarity also increases attractiveness, which is
why 'unattractive' people (think actors) might be judged somewhat attractive
despite their unattractive features...which in turn make them more memorable,
thus more attractive.

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lutusp
> The more closely faces represent the golden ratio, the more attractive
> they're judged to be.

Citation needed. The number of bogus references to the aesthetic power of the
Golden Ratio is astonishing, most of them turn out to be false.

Online searches reveal the some articles claiming a relation between facial
beauty and the Golden Ratio do so by simply redefining the Golden Ratio to
equal any number that test subjects choose as most aesthetically pleasing:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814183/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814183/)

Quote: "We found that although different faces have varying attractiveness,
individual attractiveness is optimized when the face’s vertical distance
between the eyes and the mouth is approximately 36% of its length, and the
horizontal distance between the eyes is approximately 46% of the face’s width.
These “new” golden ratios match those of an average face."

Ah -- "new" Golden Ratios. How convenient, and how utterly unlike the real
Golden Ratio, 1.618.... I caution my readers that the authors of the linked
paper are social psychologists, a field with only a superficial connection to
the world of science.

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ClayFerguson
Less attractive faces carry more information (visually) because they are not
as symmetric, have distinguishing blemishes, malformed shapes, or whatever,
and therefore trigger more neural pathways than the "average" face does, and
therefore makes them easier to recall. Each abnormal aspect of a face triggers
a neural pathway to remember that attribute, and the worst faces therefore
trigger the most pathways. And each pathway improves the statistical
probability of a future recognition (recall).

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izolate
Seems to check out, at least anecdotally. I seem to find that extremely good
looking people are initially very hard to identify. For example if I had just
met such a person briefly, I wouldn't be able to spot them in a crowd 5
minutes later. I've always wondered by this happens.

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anonu
This article goes against my own collected empirical evidence. I find that I
have a much easier time recalling pretty faces - and especially those of the
opposite sex. I think, from an evolutionary perspective at least, that this
makes sense.

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Goladus
In day to day life, the most attractive faces tend to be rare. They're
memorable simply for being attractive, meaning the face itself doesn't have to
be memorized.

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Tycho
True story: I almost never recognise Madonna when I see her on TV or on a
poster.

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cliveowen
Frankly I find it hard to believe based on empirical data.

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__m
there goes my hope of making a career in crime :/

