Edit: to clarify, I know that many short hair styles don’t have a part at all. Mostly talking about people with hair long enough to have one. I find it interesting that many studies conclude that beauty is tightly correlated with how symmetrical someone’s face is. However, many haircuts and hair styles are asymmetrical, including any style with the part off-center (very common for both male and female hair styles). Not just that, but we really like the way these haircuts and styles look too. It makes me wonder why one’s perception of beauty might not take into account the symmetry of one’s hair. I don’t have an opinion on what looks better, symmetrical vs not symmetrical as I think it depends on the person and what suits them. I am wondering if anyone else has thought about this.
I don’t think “tightly” is the right word here. Some studies seem to show that symmetry is not linked with attractiveness so much as asymmetry is linked with unattractiveness. For example:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7644543/
“In this experiment, the authors performed a manipulation that altered asymmetry within a face without altering the mean size of facial features. These faces were then rated on attractiveness. Contrary to what was predicted, faces that were made more symmetrical were perceived as being less attractive”
As for hair, it seems that humans don’t really link hair to the face in terms of attractiveness in the sense we would expect. For example:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00377/full
The study found that the attractiveness of a person’s hair can influence how attractive their face is perceived to be, but only if the person evaluating the attractiveness of the face has not previously evaluated the attractiveness of the hair.