The Average Faces of Women Around the World

The Average Faces of Women Around the World

FaceResearch.org has published the results of a recent experiment where experimental psychologists at the University of Glasgow in Scotland have combined the faces of women around to world to approximate the "average face" of each country. Using a modern version of the technique that Sir Francis Galton pioneered in the 1800's, multiple images of faces are aligned and composited together to form the final result.

There is already controversy surrounding the results. Some people feel that the average is "too attractive." Part of this is explained by the process. Instead of having a lot of blurry images with undefined features, this method averages the shape of the features before blending the images together. Also when blending, remember that many singular issues are "averaged away." The study also does not reveal how the participants were selected or how large the sample size actually is.

No conclusive evidence, however, on Polish women's propensity for bangs.

average faces of women around the world

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[Via 9gag]

Chris Knight's picture

Residing in New York City, Chris is an internationally published photographer whose work has appeared in Vogue, People, MSNBC, ABC, Ocean Drive, GQ and others. He is an instructor of Photography and Imaging at Pratt Institute and the New York Film Academy.

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Native American's are no longer around?

less than 1% of the population

very small proportion of the population. Native Hawaiians are a pretty small portion of their population. Native Alaskans seem to be doing "ok", but the rural isolated communities also have their share of problems.

I think they should have done a compilation of ALL the indigenous populations of North America . . .so combine USA, Canada, Mexico. Central America can come too.

Are you joking or your education is very poor. But again USA does rank lower than any top nation when it comes to that and much lower than many nations in Latin America. Go to Brazil, Peru, Bolivia Ecuador, Mexico and you will find plenty of Native American Indians.

and you will also find plenty of Europeans. Just go to univision or telemundo. Very few natives on the TV stations down there.

If they are in Peru, then they are not American.

Peru, as well as the other countries in the Americas, are American, simply because all the continent is America.

Native American people are called all people from any place in the Americas.

Actually, I think adding the US and other diverse countries that are predominantly "immigrants" (Australia, Canada, Singapore, etc) would make this list much more interesting.

But more difficult. Most of what they pictured here are nations where it's easier to get a single snapshot of the common person --- it's especially true in Asia, the middle-east, and africa.

Prior to 1965 and the Hart Cellar Immigration Act you could just look at the ORGANIC face of Germany and England and that would be the American face. Now just a hodge podge of sludge.

Every country is made up of immigrants to some degree, There are enough multi generational Americans to put up the average US face.

I think that would make it more interesting IMHO.

Did this really had to end up being about immigrants in the US? Really?!

Migtation of peoples has happened everywhere...

But that is exactly what makes the US what is is, a mix of various ethnicities and cultures, THAT is the population of the US. The US is not white people + the immigrants, is the whole thing. Not to mention that the US is far from the only country with immigrants. What about Frace or England, for example, by the same logic they couldn't be here either. And don't even get me started on Brazil.

A lot of countries have a lot of immigrants. One might expect, for example, the French aggregate face to have more Arab and African features, but here we are...

But this conclusion is exactly the case of Brazil as well. Brazil is not only a multi-ethnic country, but also a REAL mixed country (much more than US, believe me; I'm not Brazilian, but I already lived there).

Umm, have you ever been to France or the UK? There are a lot of immigrants there too. And Brazil is incredibly multi-ethnic, but they're included.

But they did with brazil's.. and i think it is more multiethnic than us...

but so is isreal and yet it is there.

the US isn't the most multi-ethnic country, actually the most multi-ethnic ones are already in this chart

Native Americans????

the whites aren't considered immigrants because the Indians had no form of culture.

whites aren't immigrants there nation builders,the Indians lacked any form of culture so they don't count.

With all the different ethnicities we let come here? It would look like a Franksenstein abomination.

thank god
besides theses are all old states.. US is a new state. the origianl species have been more or less wiped out

No PORTUGAL too.. :/

Is no one going to mention that the US is actually just a group of states settled on land that did actually have a native population, but was almost entirely wiped out? The population that does remain of tribes like the Hopi and Navajo are also part of the "US" and are not immigrants here.

No US because they would have to use People of Walmart ... wouldn't want to see how that would that turn out.

The bullshit about "culture" is nonsense. The obvious reason you can't include the US is that if you show a white woman, you piss off every liberal crybaby. If you show a black woman, you piss off the dumb rednecks. The asian americans get left out regardless. No win here.

Here is the US version ;-)

Wow, that's frightening.

The hottest yet,,, Are those Rosy O'Donnell's shoulders?

It is certainly Rosy's facial hair.

I live in South Africa. Though there are many races here, hence the country's nickname 'The Rainbow Nation', based on the their search for the 'average' face, I think they've done really well. I am from Switzerland though, so I would have liked to have seen a Swiss one.

The Swiss are relatively homogeneous compared to many on this list --- they would have been an easy/good one to add to the list.

No, we aren't homogeneous. We're a borderlander mix of our surrounding areas plus a lot of immigration. I'f you're looking for relatively homogeneous group living within nation state borders Finland would be a good place to start.

Borderland mix of white French, white German, white Italian. France has approx 15% of it's population coming from Africa, middle east, asia. Germany has 10% of the population non-white (middle-eastern, black, asian, etc). These are significantly higher than Switzerland.

But yes, among 'white european', Finland is perhaps the most homogenous.

All these countries have hot women. Geezus!

FAke. -.-'

Now, compare these with the representatives for these countries in the Miss Universe pageant...

How about all of the 2012 Miss America Contestants? (I've been blending stuff like this for years - here's an interesting Flickr set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patdavid/sets/72157630890087884/)

That link doesn't go to anything.

Thank you Sylvia, I fixed it (errant parenthesis).

Fixed.

They seem attractive due to a phenomenon known as "averageness" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averageness).

I've been doing these for a while after seeing the work of Jason Salavon.

For instance, here's some of Martin Schoellers celebrity portraits being averaged:
http://blog.patdavid.net/2012/08/more-averaging-photos-martin-schoeller....

And my original work trying to replicate Jason's stuff (averaged nudity):
http://blog.patdavid.net/2012/08/imagemagick-average-blending-files.html

And a neat application against 16 of the most expensive photographs in the world:
http://blog.patdavid.net/2013/06/the-30429899-photograph.html

Cool. Can you do one that takes all of the average photos in the article and make just one final image from those?

Yes, it'll just take a little bit to chop up the source image. I'll align them on the eyes and post back a bit later.

Cool, now do boobs.

The Netherlands is definitely the winner in my opinion :)

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