A study that aimed to measure the importance of the mouth and teeth to facial attractiveness has found that the mouth attracts only a small part of visual attention (Journal of the American Dental Association, January 2010, Vol. 141:1, pp. 40-46).
"There is disagreement in the literature about the relative importance of the mouth and the teeth to facial attractiveness," noted the researchers from the Ohio State University College of Dentistry. "Few investigators use objective measures for quantifying which facial features are important and their order of importance."
The authors aimed to determine the hierarchy and length of time study participants spent viewing features in facial images. They measured the eye movements of 50 young adults when they were viewing images of faces after orthodontic treatment was completed.
After quantifying eye fixations for six areas of interest: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, chin, and other, they found that the mouth received less than 10% of the viewers' visual attention.
"Viewers' visual fixations on images of well-balanced faces do not preferentially go to any single facial feature," the authors concluded. "The mouth attracts only a small part of visual attention in well-balanced faces."
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