Modeling individual preferences reveals that face beauty is not universally perceived across cultures

Facial attractiveness confers considerable advantages in social interactions,1,2 with preferences likely reflecting psychobiological mechanisms shaped by natural selection. Theories of universal beauty propose that attractive faces comprise features that are closer to the population average3 while optimizing sexual dimorphism.4 However, emerging evidence questions this model as an accurate representation of facial attractiveness,5–7 including representing the diversity of beauty preferences within and across cultures.8–12 Here, we demonstrate that Western Europeans (WEs) and East Asians (EAs) evaluate facial beauty using culture-specific features, contradicting theories of universality. With a data-driven method, we modeled, at both the individual and group levels, the attractive face features of young females (25 years old) in two matched groups each of 40 young male WE and EA participants. Specifically, we generated a broad range of same- and other-ethnicity female faces with naturally varying shapes and complexions. Participants rated each on attractiveness. We then reverse correlated the face features that drive perception of attractiveness in each participant. From these individual face models, we reconstructed a facial attractiveness representation space that explains preference variations. We show that facial attractiveness is distinct both from averageness and from sexual dimorphism in both cultures. Finally, we disentangled attractive face features into those shared across cultures, culture specific, and specific to individual participants, thereby revealing their diversity. Our results have direct theoretical and methodological impact for representing diversity in social perception and for the design of culturally and ethnically sensitive socially interactive digital agents. •We modeled individual preferences for attractive faces in two cultures•Attractive face features differ from the face average and sexual dimorphism•Instead, culture and individual preferences shape attractive face features•Attractive face features from a culture are used to judge other-ethnicity faces Zhan et al. refute theories of universal beauty, showing that Western and Eastern cultures and individual preferences shape attractive face features. Individual preference models show that attractive features differ from the average and sexual dimorphism to form a space that cultural members use to perceive face attractiveness in other ethnicities.