EDIT: This post was re-flaired as a CMV, but I don't have any particular cohesive view on this topic to challenge -- I'm just aiming to explore it and start a discussion. Still, if you disagree with anything in this OP, please comment.

How much of beauty is objective, and how much is subjective? Which parts are which, and why? In this post we’ll define “objective” as the stuff that most people agree on, and “subjective” as the stuff that many people differ on — and we’ll limit the context to Western culture, so people don’t start talking about lip gauges and foot binding.

Going as broad-strokes as possible, the specific proportion btwn. objective and subjective is important, because it makes a huge difference in practice. If beauty is 90% objective and 10% subjective, then most people are genetically fucked and doomed to dead bedrooms — but if the ratio is closer to 50-50 then we get more leeway and most people can probably be beautiful to someone they also find beautiful. (Replace "beautiful" with "hot" if you find my phrasing too faggy — it makes no difference to me.)

Let’s start the discussion with some studies. Yes, studies aren’t everything, they have tons of confounding and demographic variables, they’re incredibly easy to misinterpret (see my recent post about the OkCupid study) and social science is deeply unreliable — but what the fuck else do we have to go off of, man? The anecdotes of your friendgroup? Your friendgroup is useless to me in any practical sense unless you live in the same city as me and you’re in the same age / income demographic as me. Shut up boomer.

  • Twin studies show that individuals' aesthetic preferences for faces agree with each other about 48%, and disagree with each other about 52%, even within shared environments and families. The researchers say: "This fits with the common intuition that on the one hand, fashion models can make a fortune with their good looks, while on the other hand, friends can endlessly debate about who is attractive and who is not." (Layman article)
  • This widely cited study finds that consensus explains about 50% of a person's facial rating, and individual variation explains about 50%. The researcher calls it "shared taste" vs. "private taste".
  • This more recent study evaluated the contributions of "shared" and "private" taste, to judgments of human faces vs. judgments of abstract art. They found that consensus explains about 60% of a person's facial rating, and individual variation explains about 40%. (Predictably the abstract art was almost all personal taste, because it's abstract art and you have to make shit up to justify why you like it.)
  • This analysis of speed dating studies found that consensus explained about 60% of a person's rating, and individual variation explained about 40%. I realize this one isn't peer-reviewed but if I trust anyone on the Internet to do science outside of a science journal, it's the rationalist autists on LessWrong.
  • People in relationships overestimate their partner's attractiveness, as well as their own. I realize this is the most obvious point ever and we didn't need scientists running around with thermometers to confirm this, but there you go.
  • Spouses, siblings, and friends agree far more on who's hot than two random people in a given culture. Again, obvious, but there you go.

Frankly I wrote this post expecting to find a bunch of studies that said we're all doomed and 80% of attractiveness is objective, so the fact that these all tend so close to 50-50 is kind of blowing my mind. Seems like TOO much subjectivity to me, by intuition, but I have to cede to the scientists (they own graphing calculators and I don't). Someone please explain this thru the lens of Tinder experiments and universal Chad theory, or if I'm misinterpreting and oversimplifying these then tell me how.

(And by the way I'm just kidding, feel free to post anecdotes about your friendgroups.)