Art reveals how we separate beauty from attractiveness
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Gregor U. Hayn-Leichsenring conducted a study in which 300 adults rated 192 art portraits for beauty and attractiveness.
Participants, aged 18 to 71, viewed images from Baroque, Impressionism, and Expressionism styles and rated them on a scale of 1 to 9. The researcher balanced the number of portraits from each style to avoid bias. The study revealed that while beauty and attractiveness often go together, they aren’t exactly the same.
Ratings for both qualities were linked to the artistic style of the portrait, but beauty ratings also connected to how much a face resembled the viewer and how symmetrical it was. Interestingly, the qualities the researchers measured didn’t predict attractiveness ratings. Hayn-Leichsenring used a tool called the QIPs toolbox to analyze the images for properties like color, complexity, and symmetry.
He found that Baroque portraits, which tended to be more symmetrical and less self-similar, strongly influenced the connection between image features and beauty ratings. The researcher noted that this study focused only on portraits, and results might vary with other types of images.
