Evidence shows that symmetry is an attractive trait within and across cultures, indicating it’s important regardless of cultural norms. A study comparing the preferences of people in the United Kingdom with the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer society of Tanzania, found that symmetry was more attractive than asymmetry across both cultures. In fact, symmetry was an even bigger cue of attractiveness in the Hadza than in the Brits, suggesting that ecological pressures may be a selective pressure for this society, forcing it to find outward signs of genetic quality. Symmetry is one of these signs. Furthermore, men with higher standing (the good hunters) placed greater value on symmetry in the female face than men of lower standing; that is, men of high quality were more discriminating, and one way in which they discriminated was by facial symmetry.
Symmetry may be attractive from an evolutionary perspective, but does it really mean healthy? Look no further than Hollywood to see that the people we think of as the “most” attractive, while symmetrical, aren’t necessarily the ones you’d want bearing, raising, or touching your kids (Britney Spears, for example). Does our face give clues to overall health?
Research indicates that in animals and humans, symmetry can be a good indicator of health. Those with outward signs of symmetrical development do tend to be healthy. Only a few studies have looked at the corollary of this; that is, does asymmetry indicate bad health? A study done in 1997 found that people with facial asymmetry are more likely to have psychological, emotional, and physiological distress than those with symmetrical faces. However, it’s tough to parse out whether they have these problems because they’ve been perceived to be unattractive throughout their lives, or whether their psychological distresses are due to genetic causes (most likely a combination of both). Perhaps symmetry tells us something about physical fitness, but gives us fewer cues about a person’s psychological attributes.
Even if symmetry does equal attraction in our minds, it’s one of multiple facial cues we use to judge who’s hot and who’s not. One of things we find most attractive is when someone looks just like us; researchers believe this is because we’ve looked at our parents faces since we were young, and want someone who looks like them. Just as people often look like their dogs, couples also tend to look like each other. (A question I’d like to see answered: do adoptees or people not raised by their biological parents still prefer to date people that look like them?)
