Figure 3.

Cultural commonalities, differences, and individual preferences

(A) Shape. Three axes of the space represent the first three components (i.e., principal components [PCs]) that capture the shape variance (74%) of individual participant models. Left: same-ethnicity: faces on each axis show the multivariate attractive feature of each component (normalized color scale to the maximum of each shape or L^∗a^∗b^∗ display). Smaller dots represent the 40 individual models (Western-same, purple; Eastern-same, green); large dots represent their averages. Gray boundary surfaces (SVM classifier) separate Western-same from Eastern-same models, implying cultural specificity of attractive face shape features. Right: other-ethnicity: same as left is shown; blue and yellow dots denote individual Western-other and Eastern-other models, respectively. Pie chart shows the proportions of variance explained by the four group averages (i.e., a cultural preference) versus individuals’ idiosyncratic preference. See also Table S3.

(B) L^∗a^∗b^∗ complexion, same format as (A).