Echoism, Facial Symmetry

Interpersonal attraction
Suzi Malin, a British portrait painter, wrote Love at First Sight to examine the relationships of 50 celebrity couples. She speculates that there are three aspects of facial symmetry which attract one person to another: echoism, harmonism and prima copulism. Echoism is the similarity of one or more facial features, particularly the eyes, eyebrows, nose and mouth. Harmonism is a similarity in facial proportions, usually involving the features and the distance between them. Prima copulism is an attraction to another person based on them having similar features to someone with whom they formed a strong interpersonal bond with at an early age, usually a mother or father.
In "Symmetry and Human Facial Attractiveness" it is posited again that symmetry may act as a marker of phenotypic and genetic quality and is preferred during mate selection in a variety of species. Measures of human body symmetry correlate with attractiveness, but studies manipulating human face images report a preference for asymmetry. These results may reflect unnatural feature shapes and changes in skin textures introduced by image processing. When the shape of facial features is varied (with skin textures held constant), increasing symmetry of face shape increases ratings of attractiveness for both male and female faces. These findings imply facial symmetry may have a positive impact on mate selection in humans. This was tested empirically on perceived "beautiful people" in Hollywood and researchers found that on a percentage basis the highest rating of symmetry was achieved by actress Cate Blanchett.