Human race wired for miscegenation?

Here is an interesting little abstract from a paper that a friend mailed me. I have a ton of scientific interests and genetics is one of them:

Attractiveness of own-race, other-race, and mixed-race faces


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Gillian Rhodes, Kieran Lee, Romina Palermo, Mahi Weiss, Sakiko Yoshikawa, Peter Clissa, Tamsyn Williams, Marianne Peters, Chris Winkler, Linda Jeffery
Received 10 December 2003, in revised form 8 June 2004; published online 9 March 2004


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Abstract. Averaged face composites, which represent the central tendency of a familiar population of faces, are attractive. If this prototypicality contributes to their appeal, then averaged composites should be more attractive when their component faces come from a familiar, own-race population than when they come from a less familiar, other-race population. We compared the attractiveness of own-race composites, other-race composites, and mixed-race composites (where the component faces were from both races). In experiment 1, Caucasian participants rated own-race composites as more attractive than other-race composites, but only for male faces. However, mixed-race (Caucasian/Japanese) composites were significantly more attractive than own-race composites, particularly for the opposite sex. In experiment 2, Caucasian and Japanese participants living in Australia and Japan, respectively, selected the most attractive face from a continuum with exaggerated Caucasian characteristics at one end and exaggerated Japanese characteristics at the other, with intervening images including a Caucasian averaged composite, a mixed-race averaged composite, and a Japanese averaged composite. The most attractive face was, again, a mixed-race composite, for both Caucasian and Japanese participants. In experiment 3, Caucasian participants rated individual Eurasian faces as significantly more attractive than either Caucasian or Asian faces. Similar results were obtained with composites. Eurasian faces and composites were also rated as healthier than Caucasian or Asian faces and composites, respectively. These results suggest that signs of health may be more important than prototypicality in making average faces attractive.

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Anyway, after reading all that (probably a couple of times!) you need to examine the last sentance and parse what these guys are trying to say. I'll quote it again:

These results suggest that signs of health may be more important than prototypicality in making average faces attractive.

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What consitutes "health" in a face? Or should I say, what makes a face seem more healthy than another?

Here is a somewhat whimsical supposition:

You see someone that is mixed race, one of those races happens to be your own. On a evolutionary level what does this tell you? Several things actually:

1) The person in question has available to your offspring genetic material that isn't commonly found in your population. For all living creatures, introduction of new healthy genetics into a standard population is something like striking gold.
2) The person in question also has atleast 1/2 of similar genetic material to you.

Logical assumption: Since the person standing before me seems to be not sick, not deformed and in good health, their appearance to me signifies that previous couplings of our populations genetics produced a viable and healthy human being. Quite literally they have "health" written all over their face. It could be taken as a visual cue to our basic instincts that the genetic material that the person contains is most likely not harmful, hence the desire to introduce new genetics into your offspring could potentially make that person more attractive to you.

This still doesn't explain how, or why um... "first contact" is made. I suppose we can assume in any given population there will be people who are more adventurous about acquiring or spreading their genetic material around, well us being human beings and all ^_^ - however it does go to show that how after the product of that union has been made, it can very easily perpetuate and spread its genetic information through a population. Sort of evolutions way of ensuring that we periodically introduce what looks to be healthy genetic material into our general populations.

Also it could explain alot of anecdotal evidence that children of mixed races marriages often appear to be hot as hell

Anyway, a little levity and some hope for the future of our species