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.
If you'd like to learn how to take professional level portraits of any kind of face, the best instructor to learn from is Peter Hurley in his Perfecting the Headshot tutorial. If you purchase it now, you can save a 15% by using "ARTICLE" at checkout. Save even more with the purchase of any other tutorial in our store.
[Via 9gag]
440 Comments
no Colombia :(
There's no Native American/First Nations?
They're all beautiful! That's good to know.
Was the Korean or Japanese women's propensity for bangs explained then?
Where, pray tell, is Ireland?
No Aussies
USA !
Actually, that could just be 'Americas'
The article has already mentioned the main issue : They are too beautiful due to the averaging process. Almost all of them could easily pass a pro models.
But it reveals the secret of models quite nicely : Have a face with most average features.
Additionally the broad term "women" is dubious since these young women all seem to be in their early 20s at best. So they actually represent only a tiny minority of all women.
I think Poland has the most interesting face.
?Only four women to represent the entire continent of Africa?
To be fair, North America got only one and Africa only has a few distinct 'appearances', at least to non-Africans. There are 1.3B people in China and they only got one picture.
This shows the western/caucasian bias of this project as it currently stands. Hopefully, though, the next stage will be to explore the faces of other peoples around the world - the many faces of chinese regions, african regions, aboriginal people...
Get busy!
1/3 billion people in China all share one thing: they speak Chinese. therefore they marry other people who speak Chinese and their country is right to be confined to one picture like so many in this study. However just because many in the world can't tell a Nigerian from a Liberian doesn't mean that they're aren't stark differences. I can tell. Most people can't tell the difference between Korean and Japanese people but both countries are still up there. and when they say south Africa do they mean the country or southern Africa.
all beautiful women...and then there's samoa.
I MADE A MALE FILMSTAR VERSION OF THIS SOME TIME AGO, CHECK IT OUT HERE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh1_XRX3q4k
Interesting that Indonesia, world's #4 largest population country after China India USA, is not represented. Most likely because of its diversity. There are black Indonesians, Spanish/Portuguese Indonesians, Chinese Indonesians, etc. I call "chicken" :)
I wonder if they broke it down by island . . . Sumatran, Javanese, Balinese, etc . . . because Indonesia is basically a bunch of separate islands & cultures, smooshed together into one country.
Poland is dreadful (and I say that as a Pole) - but unfortunately accurate when it comes to the most common (in every meaning of the word) type. Netherlands is a definitive win in the Caucasian category.
In Brazil there are only black or mulatto. We are people of all origins (Africa, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal ...). In southern Brazil, for example, women are of European origin (blonde, blue eyes) ...
I see that they didn't bother with any African countries.
Er... Chad/Cameroon, Ethiopia, South Africa and West Africa. Did you look at the pictures, or just jump on into the comments?
I couldn't see those before, I was reading on a wee kindle so it might have been a displaying error. Fact remains there is more genetic diversity inside Africa than outside, seems a bit eurocentric none the less.
Do you have to see race and discrimination in EVERYTHiNG?
Are you one of those people who think West Africa is a country? why did they group Africa into regions? Makes no sense when all the other pictures are done by country, not by region.
It may make sense if the borders are recently and artificially imposed upon one homogenous ethnic group.
Do you know anything about Africa? The borders for each country may have been imposed but they in no way identify whole ethnic groups. In Nigeria alone there are 500 different ethnic groups however I will say that Africans do have a sense of pride in their country. While I would not claim that the artist should represent each ethnic group, he should at least represent each country fairly if he is going to represent them at all. Your Ignorance hurts me to know that you think "West Africa" is one homogeneous ethnic group.
You missed my point. With so many technic groups, how do you assign one that is typical to one country only? I guess we can ask the author exactly where he took the West Africa pictures. And no, I don't thinkWest Africa is a country. ( Rolls eyes.)
"One of those people"? I didn't know there was a specific subgroup of people who thought that. Sammy had missed the African pics - I was responding to that.
No, I wasn't meaning to imply that West Africa was a country, though I realise it could be construed that way. And South India - also a region, not a country. Chad/Cameroon - also sufficient diversity between these two countries to not mesh them. It's all very eurocentric, which is unsurprising as the researchers are European.
Thank you for proving me wrong. I stand corrected. I found it interesting that they distinguished between India and South India. And that they put the Han description for china. Why i came up in arms is that for centuries Africa has been forgotten. It is forgotten in the history books, only ever mentioned when talking about the slave trade. I would rather people not dumb it down further and perpetuate incorrect stereotypes (all of Africa is the same ethnic group), by grouping separate countries and regions together for ease of use.
I think they are all (the morphs) very pretty. My only question is with fifty-five nations in Africa, how did that continent end up with only four representatives and Europe has sixteen?
The author hadn't made it to those countries yet.
If he hadn't made it to those countries, why did he bother putting up pictures blending those regions together as if they were one...
Which regions?
West Africa is not a country its a region. Chad/Cameroon are two separate countries. and who's to say whether he was talking about southern Africa the region or South Africa the country. He didn't blend the middle east, he just didn't include the countries he hadn't been to.
where is lithuanian. and taiwan?
I feel like South Africa (if they mean the country, not just southern Africa) should look slightly different, considering the number of people from other races who are also from there (not just living, I mean born and raised for 1+ generations).
If you take black South Africans and White South Africans and averaged them (92% black, 8% white, it wouldn't look like the country. Only like the kids, I guess, of mixed couples, and there probably are not that many, percentage-wise. It wouldn't represent the country as a whole, ethnographically. So he excluded the white portion, apparently. You could dial this down to whatever resolution you want.
Where's Canada and the US?
The US is in the original study.
this is so inaccurate as 2/3 of the world population are people of color and this is giving a skewed representation.
Is there a country of gingers (redheads)? Their are either blonde, brunette, or black.
Вот уж не подумал бы, что именно Англия в этом плане окажется лучшая :)
is there one for men?
um....Canada, US, Australia??? I'm sure there are more countries missing too?
for Australia would the Aboriginal population be included or not? the results would be vastly different, depending on how that was approached. if Aboriginal people were a separate category, I think Australia might look a lot like England, but idk.
I think there are more Asians in Australia than in England. So no, it wouldnt look a lot like England
Demographics vary based on the source & location. The Guardian in 2011, has England at 82.79% white, 1.85% mixed, 6.11% Asian or Asian British, 2.94 Black or Black British, and 0.85% Chinese (apparently the Chinese warrant a separate category). However, London (in the same article) is 59.52% white, 3.54% mixed, 13.16% Asian or Asian British, 10.12% Black or Black British, and 1.77% Chinese. I don't know why these data sets don't add up to 100%. Maybe some people didn't respond. Other sources, like indexmundi for 2013, have the UK (bigger than just England) at ~92% white, 4% South Asian, 2% Black, 1.2% Mixed, 0.4% Chinese, and 0.4% other. The same website says Australia is 92% white, 7% asian, aboriginal and other 1%. I thought the Aboriginal population was larger, but apparently not.
So even including all the minority groups, it's possible England and Australia will come out looking fairly similar.
**of course this is assuming that his "England" picture actually was made from people reflecting the makeup of England and not just white English.
While the US is made of a lot of cultures it still would have been nice to see the average face of a Native American woman.