about face

Stephen Fry (sourse image from: E-Verse Radio)

"The authors [Kelsey Blackburn and James Schirillo from Wake Forest University] explain: 'Our results suggest that posers' left cheeks tend to exhibit a greater intensity of emotion, which observers find more aesthetically pleasing. Our findings provide support for a number of concepts – the notions of lateralized emotion and right hemispheric dominance with the right side of the brain controlling the left side of the face during emotional expression.'
     Participants were asked to rate the pleasantness of both sides of male and female faces on gray-scale photographs. The researchers presented both original photographs and mirror-reversed images, so that an original right-cheek image appeared to be a left-cheek image and vice versa.
     They found a strong preference for left-sided portraits, regardless of whether the pictures were originally taken of the left side, or mirror-reversed. The left side of the face was rated as more aesthetically pleasing for both male and female posers."
— Springer Read more...

"What you see in the mirror in old age may reflect more than your features. According to researchers publishing in a July, 2011 issue of Economics and Human Biology, the symmetry of those features can trace your early history. Studying a group of octogenarians, David Hope, Timothy Bates, and colleagues found that being poor in childhood led to greater irregularities in facial symmetry many decades later, but not in body symmetry.
     The researchers measured the facial and body symmetry of 292 people who are part of the Lothian Birth Cohort 1921, one of two birth cohorts under study at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. The year 1921 is of interest because almost every schoolchild in Scotland born in that year took a mental ability test known as the Moray House Test."
— Emily Willingham, EarthSky
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"For those of you who have one side of your face bigger than the other, I used to have the exact same problem. I'm not exactly sure what caused it, but my face used to be perfectly symmetrical. Then, after two and a half years of braces, my mom started noticing that my left side, namely the cheek along the jawline, was larger than my right side. I rarely noticed it, but it's a lot more pronounced in pictures. This went on for several years, and I began to worry whether this was going to be permanent. My mom's theory was because I always rested my face on my right hand when listening to lectures in class and over time this caused an indentation.
     So, I tried sleeping on my left side all the time and also resting my face on my left hand. It didn't seem to work. What was interesting was sometimes my mom would notice the asymmetry getting better, but then it would go back to the way it was. I was starting to think about cosmetic surgery, when one day I decided to start chewing on my right side. I'm right handed, and all my life I have favored chewing on the left side. Over time, it progressed to me chewing only on my left side and never on my right. Immediately afterwards, my mom noticed a difference that would not revert back to the original asymmetry.
     After about 3-4 months of chewing solely on my right side, my face went back to being symmetrical again (it's still not 100%, but it's no longer noticeable). I was so happy, and I couldn't believe the solution was as simple as developing the right jaw muscle by exercising it. All those years of neglecting the right masseter caused it to shrivel from disuse. Now, I make sure to alternately chew on both sides.
     For those of you who also chew heavily on one side, I strongly encourage you to try what I did. You never know, a possible solution to the asymmetry could just be a couple months away. Another idea asking a doctor what sort of exercises you could do to develop the muscle on the side of the face that is smaller. Good luck."
— Guest, (In a discussion about "corrective measures for asymmetrical face") Steady Health
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