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I think this is harder just because even though ideals are equally subjective as physical attractiveness, there's less of an overall reference of attraction to abide by for each individual. Since it's visual perception and psychology of the individual, I'd say attractiveness would be more Generalized by the attributes of the face that contribute to trust, compassion, and gentleness rather than the overall average as most people will find that the average of each country in the reference has varying attractiveness levels. Due to this I'd say that the overall result in the theoretic average of the world, would still be subjectively attractive from person to person. Something more moral and ideal based makes sense to be most average and most attractive in the world, but only because we as humans have the same general moral taught to us, albeit in different ways across the world.

Attractiveness is subjective so you can't really find a true middle ground. For example maybe there are people who like above 71mm ipd for some reason, so there are a lot of people who will find the ideal ipd unattractive or maybe even repulsive. So I am saying that the table of contents to find the average will have three columns ie ipd, frequency of ipd when liked (which itself might be a range) and average intensity of attraction (which will be derived from another set). Instead of this when we use image superposition the resultant image ends up somewhere near the face of the evolutionary apex ancestor. Now when we say evolutionary apex the problem is that we don't know if it was his or her attractiveness or something else that made him or her the apex. And you won't find the average person of the world website because that might be too controversial since either someone will claim that the resultant is either the apex or most attractive and the resultant's apparent race is the superior.

Smarter and athletic people aka people above average tend to have better genetics so they also are more aesthetically beautiful generally.

When it comes to attraction tho there are some psychological and physiological things that come to play like hormones, period cycle, symmetry, gender, liking someone, halo effect and such.

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Even ignoring the fundamental subjectivity of the question, your reasoning only works if all distributions relating attractiveness to some feature are "simple", having only one peak. If instead, for example, the distribution is bimodal, then the average is going to be in a region that almost nobody finds attractive.

Others have already touched on the subjectivity of the question posed, so I'll try to add something else to the conversation.

If this "average unicorn" were to be found, I don't believe it would necessarily be a case of them being "the most attractive," but there's likely a good chance that, based on physical appearance alone, they would appeal to the most people.

I think this might be a bit of pedantry in relation to the question asked, but given the malleability of attractiveness, and the many factors that go into it, I think it's about the best you can hope for.

There's a small chance that this could be true if the only context is physical appearance, since that's often the "first step" in vetting a potential mate. Once you add other complexities, it starts to lose some of its weight.

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There was an article posted that claimed what you’re saying. That’s why all the “average” faces in your link are super attractive. The main theory is that when most of your facial features are average, you will be able to have attractive kids with more people, because it would take relatively extreme features to move your “genes face” away from the average. So it’s advantageous in that way, and attractive as a result. Strange that you thought this up yourself when the article I mention and the one you linked made their rounds at the same time, related to each other, and were often referenced by the others comment section 🤓

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Good point

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I do remember learning about exactly what you're saying when I was in my first year of university, in introductory psychology (this was back in 2005). I tried to find the study I would have been taught, it looks like it may have been this: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40062595

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Absolutely not. Humans love novel things the most as that's how our brains are wired and it has its roots in high school economics with the idea of diminishing returns. The more you see/use/experience something the less likely it is to give you joy when doing/seeing/experiencing those things. Aside from that you are your own person and what makes you experience joy from peoples appearance is going to be different from what the next person does. On another note though due to there being a wide variety of different cultures and body and face structures around the world it might be possible for that "normal" to be considered novel enough to be considered (on average) more attractive than what you are used to at your local level. Look up what different beauty standards are for different cultures across the world and you'll be amazed at the fact that it's kind of like a circle where one culture aspires to be like another culture and that culture aspires to be like a 3rd and the third culture aspires to be like the original culture mentioned at the beginning. It's not a perfect circle but you'll notice that's a pattern that exists within it

Averageness is attractive in faces (and many other things). However, the most attractive faces are not just average.

https://www.nature.com/articles/368239a0

Perrett, D. I., May, K. A., & Yoshikawa, S. (1994). Facial shape and judgements of female attractiveness. Nature, 368(6468), 239-242.

Or it might gain psedu weight?

That's a fair point. The added complexity of mate selection would either amplify or detract from the perception of attractiveness.

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