Composite Faces

I just recently discovered how much fun composite faces can be to play with. A composite face is exactly what the name implies - it's a combination of multiple faces. In my humble internet research, I've discovered that composite faces tend to be more attractive than the individual faces that were used to make up the composite. This is because average is considered attractive. But that's not all - anthropologists have done many studies with composite faces, revealing some interesting facts. For example, one scientist presented people with a series of faces, and asked them to identify those they considered to be dominant. When he made composites separating the faces based on his survey, he found that those faces considered to be dominant all had similar characteristics (large jaw, thick eyebrows, etc), while the remaining pictures exhibited more passive looks.

I decided to do my own experiment - for fun - and see what the average guy and girl in my ward look like. I just used the ward directory, so there were several factors that contributed to fuzziness. But it turned out clear enough, so I'm posting the pictures. Here are the results based on the combination of 35 girls and 32 guys:

The girls

The guys

As you can see, they're quite beautiful. It was actually fun to combine just a few faces at a time - I could pick out individual faces in the composite face.