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Comment by pfannkuchen | Hacker News Reader

Do the faces in the results section all look the same to anyone else?

Not sure if this means the study was questionable or if I have some kind of face blindness.

They don't look the same to me but something about the models seems really oversimplified to me, in the sense that the variation they're modeling doesn't come anywhere near capturing real-world variation affecting sexual and romantic behavior. To me it feels like there's huge dimensions of facial variation that are just being completely ignored.

When I think of masculine looking women I know, just for example, they look nothing like the masculinized photos. It's like they're focusing on the averages , and a bunch of important variation is being collapsed in the process.

> doesn't come anywhere near capturing real-world variation affecting sexual and romantic behavior.

I haven’t even looked at the images myself. But just speaking from personal experience - sometimes one can feel more attracted to the person who doesn’t look as conventionally attractive. Some people see a person who looks like a supermodel and they immediately think “I have zero chance” and so they don’t really feel any attraction. Then they see someone of (judged by conventional standards) more average looks and they feel like they actually might have a chance with them, and that feeling makes them feel attracted to them.

I don't think it's that. "Super models" are kind of weird looking to begin with. They're picked because they have some quirk. You might like that or you might not, I don't think it's to do with "chance". Then there's people that have all the right features but ultimately look kind of bland. Maybe chance is a factor. Maybe you read something into their personality from their facial expressions. Some people just look like bitches even if they're kind of hot, and that affects attraction too.

I agree, they all look very similar. The more masculine man has a slightly narrower head I think and slightly different eye shape. The more feminine woman looks weird to me, a bit goblin-like with the cheeks and eyes. It would be more interesting to see the actual photos that these are averages of.

GP asked about the "Results" section. The ones in "Materials and methods" are much easier to distinguish.

Yes, they look so similar that you'd have to stare at them a while to notice any differences.

EDIT: After looking at them for a while I notice some subtle differences in the male images, but very subtle. And less differences in the female images.

I can see that some of these faces are slightly wider than others etc, but otherwise they're pretty much the same. You would get a bigger difference than that by photographing the same face with different focal length.

In regards to Figure 3 I think the most easily observable difference, particularly by comparing men's short-term prediction and women's long-term preference, is the inner eyebrows' tilt and upper eyelid height.

Also the chin is slightly shorter and less sharp in the women's preference in both short and long-term cases. But yeah it's true that the women's replies seem to not deviate that much from the neutrally dimorphic male face.

Otoh it's surprising to see how both men and women thought the preferred female faces have to possess more than double the neutral dimorphic one.

They look arguably same to me.

Except in the women's faces. The ones women predicted look more fat to me (they're supposed to look more thin). So, to me, they look opposite of what they're supposed to be.

Maybe it's dark mode, but they all look the same to me too. Barely noticable differences, but can't read any emotional charge, other then some being harder/milder.

Not identical, but fairly close. Much closer than the examples in the first image would suggest based on the numbers presented.

Take a look at figure 1 (in methods) to get a better sense of what range of features the participants were working with.

Facial structure alone tends to be fairly androgynous. You're used to a lot of other cues from hair, height, body shape, clothing, and voice.

Movement. Feminine way of moving is astonishingly soft and curvy in tons of ways.

And skin! Not sure how people overlook skin: cheeks color, smoothness, freckles, tanned/not tanned. Sends so many signals

I can see a difference in the female pictures but not the male pictures. I am a straight male if that has any significance.

I could not distinguish them in the slightest. I have autism and struggle with faces.

Same I can't see anything

It's like asking which white NPC from The Sims is the hottest.

We don't even perceive colors the same way.

I would say the differences are subtle at best.

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