Answer to Question #164558 in Zoology for Amna

Question

While making mate choice organisms find symmetrical individuals more attractive, why

Answer 1

The relation between symmetry and what we find attractive is really quite remarkable in evolutionary terms. 

Under the view of symmetry preferences, symmetric individuals are considered attractive because we have evolved to prefer healthy potential mates. And symmetric stimuli of any kind is processed more easily than it can process asymmetric stimuli)

Two different explanations have been put forward by researchers:

(1) The Evolutionary Advantage view-

• The Evolutionary Advantage view proposes that symmetric faces are attractive because symmetry indicates how healthy an individual is: while our genes are such that we are designed to develop symmetrically, disease and infections during physical development cause small imperfections (i.e. asymmetries).
• Thus, only individuals who are able to withstand in-fections (i.e. those with strong immune systems) are successful in developing symmetric physical traits. Indeed, some (but not all) findings from studies of health in humans and many animal species have observed such a relationship between symmetry and indicators of health, with healthier individuals being more symmetric.
• Example, swallows and peacocks with symmetric tail feathers are particu-larly healthy and preferred by potential mates.

(2) The Perceptual Bias view

• The Perceptual Bias view, however, proposes that symmetric faces are preferred because symmetric stimuli of any kind are more easily proc-essed by the visual system than their asymmetric counterparts. Because of this greater ease of processing symmetric stimuli, symmetric stimuli of any kind might be preferred to relatively asymmetric stimuli.