ve in males. This proposes an interesting speculation that for females there might be stabilizing selection, whereas for males directional selection is more important due to male - male competition. The most interesting thing with prototypes is that attractive prototyping allows two things: Firstly, we are able to adjust our beauty standards to the mean of the population. Media thus can create "unreal" beauty standards. Secondly, prototyping opens our possibilities of mate-choice. If we would have an innate template for attractiveness, we could run the danger of either never meeting somebody fitting the template, or being frustrated by the non-fitting mates we find. Theories of Prototype Processing: Contra. One problem for prototyping is created by the fact, that we remember average faces very poorly, because they do not deviate from the templates we use to store faces. If this is true, we should expect deviations from average in beautiful faces. One has to be recognizable and distinct. So adding an individual touch to average ness could make an attractive face beautiful. Second, we are quite aware to the fact that there are single faces, which are not prototypical at all - and they are constantly rated as more attractive. Third, symmetry could play a role - composite faces are much more symmetrical than the single faces, which are used to form the prototype. Symmetry and Attractiveness. Bodily and facial asymmetries manifest themselves very early in human development and remain stable during lifetime. Asymmetry is the result of developmental instabilities during early embryonic development, and sometimes-extreme asymmetries occur after puberty. At this point we have to distinguish between MPA's and bodily laterality. Usually both sides of the body differ - but the vertical body symmetry line can still be a straight line (although laterality is present). Asymmetry distort this straight line into a zigzag line....
