The romantic story line says no, claiming that we are all unique and that love itself is as varied as a snowflake. In this view, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Love is blind. Yadda yadda yadda. But the scientific answer to this question is a resounding yes. Although science cannot explain the idiosyncratic reasons why you may prefer a partner who likes piña coladas, it can do a better job with general explanations of why you are attracted to someone than you can yourself. First of all, let’s ditch the idea that beauty is subjective. It’s not. Studies have shown that even babies prefer attractive faces, so these preferences seem to be virtually hardwired into us—so much so that when hooked up to electrodes, people looking at beautiful female faces generated an extra electrical charge. And surveys show that there is strong agreement about whom people find attractive. Interestingly, composite pictures melding numerous faces always outscore individual faces in attractiveness and become more attractive the more faces you include, for the simple reasons that a more symmetrical face is the result.
