"Slanted" Eyes in Orientals

I think we are arguing two facets of the same view, with perhaps a slight divergence on the relative importances of the different mechanisms.I do think one needs to be a little careful on the "Most people find traits that belong to individuals they are around a lot more attractive than traits of individuals they do not see often" versus attraction to novelty. Attraction to novelty also manifests as interest in art etc.Some novelty is desirable in a mate, too much is not. This would be a measure of compatability between gene sets while ensuring enough protection from {incest \ inbreeding}. All else being equal eye shape has novelty.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Probably pretty close to splitting hairs. The limits to the attraction of novelty is based on species typical designs and high pheno/genotypic quality. You won't find six eyes attractive or a highly testoteronized face attractive on a female no matter where you have been raised. But there is an almost infinite subtly in the way a face can be put together with in these boundaries. Slanted eyes/open eyes being one example. If there is no adaptive benefit or signaling effect it becomes very difficult to argue for ANY selection pressure natural or sexual.The main point I was making about changes in how attractive you find new feature with in the boundaries as a function of how long you have been around them is that any of these traits fall naturally under the human spectrum of "attractive" and its just getting used to them. I can't remember the study off the top of my head, I will look for it. That looked at how attractiveness ratings for various facial features changed compared to frequency of exposure to the traits. If these traits are already with in the radar of human attractiveness then they are purely a historical accident as was said early on but not in terms of sexual selection. I don't think there is ANY selection going on here, but I could be proved wrong if someone had some more concrete data on what kind of signal could be being displayed here.

I would be interested in the studyI just went through
Department of Psychology | The University of New Mexico and am still digesting some of it.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I will work on it tomarrow. Dr. Miller has done some interesting work, I took a course from him last semester and liked his theory quiet a bit. I think it lacks a certain falsifiablity for the moment, and personally have a tendancy to lean towards a slightly diffrent version of human intelligence (more in line with Randy Thornhill also at UNM).But I will try and post the article info tomarrow.

Okay the big tour de force for the commonality of what constitutes facial attractivness was:Michael R. Cunningham, Alan R. Roberts,Anita P. Barbee,Perri B. Druen, Cheng-Huan Wu "Their Ideas of Beauty Are, on the Whole, the Same as Ours: Consistency and Variability in the Cross-Cultural Perception of Female Physical Attractiveness " Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 68 (2) February 1995, pp. 261-279. American Psychological AssociationI thought this study also showed that exposure to faces of diffrent races increased attractivness ratings, I was wroung. That information actually when I started e-mailing around was something I must have picked up in my conversations with on of my advisors. He said it was ancedotal but talked about but he couldn't think of a specific study. So I this is what I got. Sorry about that.I don't think that mix up harms my point that facial attractivness as a sexually selected signal stays pretty constant across cultures and that minor variations are insignificant and probably totally accidental and not under direct selection of any type.

There was also an (cover story) article in discover mag a while back about beauty -- the cover was a pastiche of pictures to arrive at an "ideal" beauty. If you are interested I will look for it.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I believe the consensus was that symmetry was what was looked for. Though people seem to be wired to find thier own ethnic type more attractive than others, when faced with pictures of individuals outside their ethnic group all tended to rate the same pictures as attractive. When symmetry of the face was measured there seemed to be a correlation between greater symmetry and higher attractiveness ratings.

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Asgara
"Embrace the pain, spank your inner moppet, whatever....but get over it"

ALL studies on mate attraction, regardless of whether on humans, have found symmetry to be significant factor. Also, women report better orgasms with more symmetrical partners (and I don't just mean down there). Finally, IIRC, the most attractively rated people are composites outside of the range of actual racial variation - i.e. caucasion/oriental crosses.

In honest signaling you can take several approaches to it, the first is large exaggerated and costly signals that signify your general good health and ability to invest in such a gaudy display. The second is to try and recreate a very refined average. I have always found this analogous to say the difference between mocking bird mate calls and whale mate calls. The mocking bird trains very hard to have novel and loud and impressive calls, while the whale works very hard to try and replicate precisely songs that can be 4-6 hours long. Females choose either on gaudy display or the accuracy of replication. Facial attractiveness seems to be the latter type of signaling. The average of any amount of faces will always be the most attractive.Symmetry is very important and probably one of the greatest signals but another VERY important part of facial attractiveness is secondary hormone markers. For women the face needs to be highly estrgonized and in men it needs to be highly testosteronized (this is a bit of a misnomer since an estrognized face is a face that has not be testosteronized, since high estrogen to testosterone ratio prevents structural changes testosterone makes after puberty). Also factors such as neotany and senesance plays a role. The study I quoted above gives half a dozen or so important criteria.People do have a tendency to rank those of their same ethnic background as more attractive than other ethnic backgrounds. But when they rank the relative attractiveness of people in other ethnic backgrounds it correlates like r>.9 with the within ethnic ranks. Also there is talk that maybe exposure to novel ethnic traits over time will increase the relative attractiveness rankings. But I again I don't think this has been systematically studied.

From the Feb 2000 Discover article (Discover Financial Services)
{{you need to sign in to get full articles now}} If each person is constructing their personal average from their experience then exposure to more "foreign" faces for extended time periods would probably show a drift in the 'average' value. I would also expect recent experience to carry more weight than past.Pictures not loading on the article one is a computer evolved face from 16 at start and subsequent generations made from the top picks.almond eyes, but no fold (also not in the original samples, so biased results).

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

not true. a sexual preference for a trait that endangers survival will ensure the survival of only the strongest members... those who can survive in spite of a purposeful handicap. that's why birds sexually select for big tails and pretty bowers (thatch housey things... see bower birds). it takes a lot of work to survive while sporting a long, heavy tail or trying to build a fabulous bower. so that particular specimen (potential mate) is more likely to be strong, have good eyesight (bowers generally include differently colored items sorted by color), and be especially clever to elude predators and rivals.there are lots of examples of this. but birds are the most common.also that weird playful jumping that antelope do in africa is a similar handicap technique. it has nothing to do with sexual selection, but it can dissuade a lion from attacking. it says 'hey look, i can hop around like an idiot and give you a headstart on catching me and yet, STILL outrun you... so why don't you save us both the effort". and it works.. because the antelope must be able to back it up, or he dies.

people also look for (subconsciously) similar proportions of extremities, and (funnily enough) proportionally identical earlobe length. people are weird.

I may have overstated the case, but lets not go overboard the other direction. Nothing ensures survival, and such extreme sexual selection pressure will mean that both survival and sexual selection will place extra pressure on the individuals. As a birder I am aware of the many examples of extreme sexual selection, some of them on the verge of extinction.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

um. i qualified that.
ensure the survival of only the strongesti meant that it ensures the strength of the survivors not that anyone will survive necessarily. the idea is to kill off the weak ones. those not strong enough to carry their tails or smart/quick enough to evade predators when their ridiculous displays call attention to them will be culled. the rest... on with the booty.

we come closer.putting extra survival pressure on potential mates through sexual selection means that those that are able to survive to mate will be the strongest and healthiest of the available choices. whether that is sufficient to ensure species survival is the question.my feeling is that in the long term it is self (species) defeating compared to more generalist species.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}