Psychologists created a scale of faces, ranging from unattractive to attractive, and found those around the half-way point were rated as the most trustworthy.

 

The experts believe that we are more comfortable with familiar faces because we are tuned¹ to fear the unknown and unusual.

 

Lead researcher Carmel Sofer, from Princeton University said: 'Face typicality likely indicates familiarity and cultural affiliation².

 

'As such, these findings have important implications for understanding social perception, including cross-cultural perceptions and interactions.'

 

For their study, the researchers created a 'typical' face by digitally combining 92 female faces.

 

They also created an 'attractive' face by averaging the faces of 12 women who were independently rated as the most beautiful, from a separate set of photos.

 

The typical face and the attractive face were then merged³ together, and from this, the researchers created variations that had differing levels of attractiveness and typicality.

 

The result was a continuum of faces ranging from least attractive to most attractive, with the most typical face in the middle.

 

To remove gender⁴ bias⁵, only women rated the faces on a nine-point scale for trustworthiness or attractiveness.

 

After each face was rated on three separate occasions, the results showed a U-shaped relationship between face typicality and trustworthiness.

 

That is, the closer a face was to the most typical face, the more trustworthy it was considered to be.

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