Science Reveals What Men and Women Find Most Attractive About Each Other

A lot of factors go into selecting a romantic partner, including physical attraction. While anyone can become attractive based on their personality, interests, or sense of humor, many people say they have a “type” when it comes to that first visual impression—and more often than that, these cues are subconscious. With that in mind, scientists recently shed some light on what men and women find most attractive about each other.

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A new study looked at facial feature awareness in men and women.

The latest research comes from a study published in the journal The Laryngoscope. A team of researchers from Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine set out to understand what men and women each tend to focus on when determining facial attractiveness, specifically noting which regions of the face were rated most highly, PsyPost reports.

To investigate, the researchers enlisted 154 participants who were shown images of 40 different male and female faces for a total of 10 seconds. Subjects in the photos included a diverse mix of people from different races and ethnicities, ranging in age from their 20s through their 60s, all without any distinct facial expression or cosmetic products. Unlike previous studies that focused on the facial feature hypothesis, participants were shown the subject’s entire face instead of just a specific area, such as the eyes, mouth, or nose.

Participants were split into different groups during the test, with 47 of them (with an average age of 35) tasked with ranking the facial attractiveness of each person they saw. A second group of 50 was told to scan each face for any signs of cosmetic surgery. And a third control group, made up of 57 participants (with roughly the same average age as the first group), was given no instructions. During this time, the focus of each participant’s gaze was recorded by an eye-tracking system to verify which facial features they were homing in on.

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Here’s the #1 facial feature men and women find most attractive.

Once they completed their analysis, the researchers found different focus areas across the three groups. While all of them looked most at each subject’s central features (the mouth, eyes, and nose), the attractiveness-ranking group spent more time looking at the lower part of the face (or the mouth, nose, and cheeks) compared to the other two groups, per PsyPost.

But how did attractiveness ranks play out? The researchers found that participants focused on the mouth, eyes, and nose, along with hair, for faces with higher attractiveness ratings. Those with lower ratings typically had the most focus drawn to their neck and forehead.

However, it wasn’t just between the three groups that researchers noticed some discrepancies. The team also found that men spent the most time gazing at the mouth before giving a high attractiveness rating to a female subject. Meanwhile, women spent more time looking at the eyes and hair of male subjects when making their decisions.

This isn’t the first time a study has found that each sex has a different focus area when assessing attractiveness. But the researchers pointed out that it was a novel approach to collecting data, thanks to the use of gaze-recording cameras instead of self-reported responses, as well as the use of unmanipulated images.

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So, what does this all mean?

The team admitted there were a few limitations to their study, including that using a flat image to judge a face’s attractiveness wasn’t indicative of the real world, where different viewing angles all factor into an assessment. They also pointed out that each participant’s individual preference and personal histories could influence their rankings.

Still, the researchers concluded that beyond exposing which features might stand out most to members of the opposite sex, their data could also influence facial cosmetic surgery. Those looking to become “more attractive” may now know which features to focus on when opting to go under the knife, helping to weed out unnecessary procedures.

The team suggests that future research delve deeper within each person’s features (including factors like symmetry, fullness, and texture) to determine how these contribute to an overall assessment. They’d also like to explore the connection between these physical traits and non-visual components, such as the sound of someone’s voice and behaviors.