Do you think these two people are attractive?
The woman’s face is a mathematical average of 55 female business portraits I did last year. The man’s face is an average of 50 male portraits. The headshots used included a wide variety of people ranging in age from early 20s to early 70s.
When making these composites, I didn’t use portraits of anyone who wore eyeglasses, had facial hair or had long hair partially covering their face. These were left out since they hid facial features.
It’s not possible to calculate an average hairstyle or average clothing style so please ignore the odd hair texture and the indistinct clothes.
Java Psychomorph was used to do the averaging. This software is often used to average together multiple headshots to show that the average is more attractive than any of the individual portraits.
The Averageness Theory (or a very long report here) suggests that someone considered facially attractive is really just someone who’s more average looking. The more average you look, the more attractive you appear. So being beautiful is actually about being perfectly average.
A 2009 University of Toronto study found that a person considered to be facially beautiful is someone who has facial dimensions that match the general population’s average facial dimensions.
So what does this have to do with business portraits? Instead of asking your portrait photographer to make you look handsome or beautiful, ask them to make you look really average :-)
A good photographer knows how to use pose and lighting to optimize your face shape. The more average you look, the more attractive you become and the more trustworthy you appear.
Of course, an effective business portrait is more than just showing your face. As you can see in the two averaged faces above, a smile and eye contact are very important. A genuine smile shows friendliness. Eye contact implies honesty and confidence.
