Book Review Facial Attractiveness: Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Social Perspectives

Edited volumes are an imperfect format for the presentation of ideas, not least because their goals vary. Sometimes they aim simply to survey the field, at other times to synthesize and advance the field. I prefer the former for disciplines that by their nature are not disposed to achieve definitive statements (philosophy, for example). A volume on an empirical topic, however, by my judgment falls short if it closes without firm conclusions, if not on the topic itself, at least on the state of the art of its study. Facial Attractiveness does fall short of this standard, but not for lack of serious effort (especially appreciated are such features as the summary table in Chapter 5). Although by any measure an excellent and thorough review of the major strands of its topic, the volume’s authors are often in such direct conflict that the reader is disappointed that the editors do not, in the end, provide sufficient guidance about where the most productive research avenues lie. Every contribution is persuasive, but as they cannot all be correct, who is to win the day? An obvious place to begin is with the question, What is “attractiveness”? Most writers seem unaware of the problem, and how it might impact their research methodology. What, the reader wants to know, is the most defensible conceptualization of the focal phenomenon? Often an author focuses explicitly on the aesthetic dimension of “attractive,” treating it as a synonym for “beauty.” A recurring phrase in the book is that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” with the authors undertaking to argue whether this standard accurately describes social reality. They reach contradictory conclusions. Chapter 1 (by Adam Rubenstein et al.) finds the maxim to be a “myth” which, by chapter’s end, is presumably dispelled; Anthony Little and his co-authors in Chapter 3, however, view their contribution as “help[ing] to place beauty back into the eye of the beholder.” Other chapters take intermediate positions. Besides the aesthetic, “attractive” can refer to raw sexual appeal, or to more long-term relationship evaluations. Which kind of attractiveness one intends will determine the proper methodology to use, and thereby impact the likely experimental results. As only one example, if one intends to investigate aesthetic attraction, the sexual orientation of the judges does not matter, whereas it matters a great deal if one intends to investigate sexual or relationship attraction. Yet no study discussed in these