Many years ago, I did research on the meaning of physical beauty. It was disheartening because the only conclusion I could reach is that its effects were protean and powerful. My subjects were all young people and I wonder how the results might have changed if I had a broader group. In the group that I did study, however, there was a concordance on the characteristics that compose beauty, at least within our culture. And the number of judgments that good looks affect is downright frightening. Beauty makes people seem smarter, more persuasive, more likely to be right, nicer, and, of course, more sought after.
Is there consensus on beauty? More, perhaps than people like to think. Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but most beholders look for much the same things. In research about what characteristics are considered beautiful, one factor always dominates -- symmetry. Symmetrical faces (and bodies) are judged to be more attractive tha assymetric ones. There are other factors, of course, but it is easy to imagine that these nearly universal characteristics that are judged attractive, are those that betoken good health. The evolutionary pressure for that is obvious. Selection in mates is maintained in evolution if the preferred elements are determined by good health and advantageous physical attributes. So there is a built in bias toward features that are correlated with health. Fortunately, although there is pretty high consensus, there is still enough variability in individual concepts of beauty that we do not all seek exactly the same people.
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