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Scientists: Facial symmetry indicates a person's selfishness, while asymmetry indicates a difficult childhood
Last reviewed: 30.06.2025
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The two papers describing individual relationships also show how complex a subject humans are for scientific research.
Recent and unrelated studies of the causes and consequences of symmetry/asymmetry in human faces form a curious diptych, showing... most likely, the extreme complexity of man - a biological and social being - as an object of study.
According to the study of Santiago Sanchez-Perez, who works at the Universities of Barcelona and Edinburgh, and Enrique Turiegano, who represents the Autonomous University of Madrid, the symmetry of the human face, which strongly correlates with its beauty, is associated with such a human trait as egoism.
The scientists put a group of people participating in their experiment before a “prisoner’s dilemma.” Each participant in a pair of conditional prisoners who did not communicate with each other chose between an altruistic and a selfish decision; according to the conditions, the one who preferred the selfish decision, counting on the fact that the “partner” would choose the altruistic one, won more. The researchers then correlated the results of the answers with the symmetry of the subjects’ faces; it turned out that people with symmetrical faces (i.e. beautiful ones) are more selfish in their behavior.
Sanchez-Perez and Turiegano attribute the pattern they discovered to biological factors: other studies they cite have found that people with symmetrical faces have fewer congenital diseases than the average human individual, and therefore (and because of their attractiveness) they are more independent and need others less than others need them.
Another study, conducted at the University of Edinburgh by a group led by Professor Ian Deary, links facial asymmetry to a difficult childhood. Scientists examined 15 zones in photographs of 292 participants in the long-term monitoring of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921, taken at the age of 83, and came to the conclusion that poverty and related factors (overcrowded housing, outdoor toilets, cigarette smoke, poor nutrition, illness) leave an indelible mark on the face. Even if a person subsequently becomes rich (like TV chef Gordon Ramsay and artist Tracey Emin, mentioned by the researchers), the asymmetry does not disappear.
Both papers are supported by references and the authors' own research; of course, it is tempting to assume (since the first case links facial symmetry and its consequences, and the second - the lack of symmetry and its causes) that people with symmetrical faces are more selfish, since they come from the "upper" social strata (whose representatives, according to another study, are less inclined to cooperate with others). Nevertheless, our ("CL") observations of five generations of one family show that a distinct asymmetry of the face (or more precisely, the wings of the nose) may be hereditary, and not a trait conditioned by individual development. Apparently, the determinism of each human individual by biological and social, general and individual factors sets a degree of complexity that cannot be described by linear correlations.
The research results (1) will be presented at the Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau and (2) published in the journal Economics and Human Biology.
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