Large differences in beauty preferences (so called "my type") even between identical twins:

http://www.cell.com/current-biology/...showall%3Dtrue

http://www.pulseheadlines.com/beauty...es-study/7387/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1001125637.htm

Abstract

•Differences in how people judge face attractiveness can be reliably measured

•Individual face preferences are primarily explained by differences in environments

Although certain characteristics of human faces are broadly considered more attractive (e.g., symmetry, averageness), people also routinely disagree with each other on the relative attractiveness of faces.

That is, to some significant degree, beauty is in the “eye of the beholder.” Here, we investigate the origins of these individual differences in face preferences using a twin design, allowing us to estimate the relative contributions of genetic and environmental variation to individual face attractiveness judgments or face preferences.

We first show that individual face preferences (IP) can be reliably measured and are readily dissociable from other types of attractiveness judgments (e.g., judgments of scenes, objects). Next, we show that individual face preferences result primarily from environments that are unique to each individual. This is in striking contrast to individual differences in face identity recognition, which result primarily from variations in genes [ 1 ].

We thus complete an etiological double dissociation between two core domains of social perception (judgments of identity versus attractiveness) within the same visual stimulus (the face).

At the same time, we provide an example, rare in behavioral genetics, of a reliably and objectively measured behavioral characteristic where variations are shaped mostly by the environment.

The large impact of experience on individual face preferences provides a novel window into the evolution and architecture of the social brain, while lending new empirical support to the long-standing claim that environments shape individual notions of what is attractive.
The Study

First, they considered the face preferences of 35,000 people that used the website TestMyBrain. After that, they tested the preferences of 547 pairs of identical twins and 214 pairs of same-sex non-identical twins, making them rate their beauty-score on 200 faces, according to the press release. (...)

The results of twins comparison revealed that although genes have an important role on beauty preferences, the existence of “my type” is due to very personal experiences. Even with the exact same DNA, the exact same brothers chose different types of women.

The study also revealed that those preferences have (...) to do with the faces you’ve seen, the social interactions and your first love. Exposure plays a big role on deciding whether someone is attractive or not.

Hence the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.

(...)

Of course, some aspects of attractiveness are pretty universal and may even be coded into our genes, the researchers say. For example, people tend to prefer faces that are symmetric. Beyond such limited shared preferences, however, people really do have different "types."

"We estimate that an individual's aesthetic preferences for faces agree about 50 percent, and disagree about 50 percent, with others," write joint leaders of this project, Laura Germine of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University and Jeremy Wilmer of Wellesley College.

(...)

The origin of the "eye of the beholder" - the uniqueness of an individual's face preferences - is mostly based on experiences, not genes. Those experiences, moreover, are highly specific to each individual.

"The types of environments that are important are not those that are shared by those who grow up in the same family, but are much more subtle and individual, potentially including things such as one's unique, highly personal experiences with friends or peers, as well as social and popular media," Germine says.

In other words, it's not about the school you went to, how much money your parents made, or who lived next door. That pretty face you see apparently has a lot more to do with those experiences that are truly unique to you: the faces you've seen in the media; the unique social interactions you have every day of your life; perhaps even the face of your first boyfriend or girlfriend.

The researchers say that the large impact of personal experience on individual face preferences "provides a novel window into the evolution and architecture of the social brain." They say that future studies could look more closely at which aspects of the environment are really most important in shaping our preferences for certain faces and for understanding where our preferences for other things--like art or music or pets--come from.