fWHR.

What fWHR is

The Facial Width-to-Height Ratio is one of the most heavily studied numbers in modern face research. It is the ratio of two measurements:

• Width: bizygomatic width — the distance between your two cheekbones (the most lateral points of the zygomatic bones)
• Height: upper-face height — the distance from the upper lip to the brow line (specifically, the nasion or the brow ridge depending on the protocol)

Width divided by height = fWHR.

Adult averages cluster around 1.9 in both sexes, but the spread is wide:

• Low fWHR (<1.7): long, narrow face. Reads as more neotenous, less dominant.
• Average fWHR (1.85–1.95): typical adult face.
• High fWHR (>2.0): short, wide face. Reads as dominant, aggressive, “blocky.”

fWHR is famously not a strongly dimorphic trait — male and female averages are very close. What is dimorphic is what high fWHR means on a male face vs. a female face.

Why fWHR matters

fWHR is the single most-cited facial metric in social psychology because it correlates with a long list of behavioral outcomes — not just appearance:

• Perceived dominance — strongest finding. Higher fWHR = rated as more dominant. Robust across cultures.
• Perceived aggression — high-fWHR faces are read as more aggressive, even with neutral expressions
• Actual aggression — multiple studies have found small but real correlations between male fWHR and measured aggression, in sports, military, and lab tasks. Effect size is small but consistent.
• CEO performance — one famous study found higher fWHR CEOs led firms with higher financial returns. Replication mixed.
• Short-term mating success — high-fWHR men are rated more attractive for short-term contexts; lower-fWHR men score higher for long-term partner contexts.

The mechanism is not settled. Leading theories:

1. Testosterone proxy — fWHR was originally hypothesized to be testosterone-driven through puberty. Direct evidence is mixed.
2. Bone-architecture signal — wider zygomatic arches require more masseter mass, which signals chewing force and overall robustness
3. Self-fulfilling prophecy — people read high-fWHR faces as dominant, those people then act more dominantly, behavior becomes habit

fWHR in face scoring

In attractiveness research, the fWHR-attractiveness link is U-shaped:

• Very low fWHR (long, narrow face) — penalized for looking weak
• Average — fine
• High fWHR (short, wide face) — rewarded for masculine men, slightly penalized for women

In Fazly’s scoring, fWHR feeds into the masculinity sub-score for male-presenting scans and is roughly neutral on female-presenting scans. It also interacts heavily with the gonial angle score — a face with high fWHR and a sharp gonial angle is the classic “alpha” geometry, while high fWHR with a soft gonial angle reads as round or “doughy.”

How fWHR relates to other facial metrics

fWHR is calculated from upper-face proportions, so it’s directly affected by:

• Cheekbone projection — wider zygomatic arches push width up
• Midface ratio — short midfaces (low brow-to-upper-lip distance) push the ratio up
• Brow position — lower brows reduce height, which pushes the ratio up

This is why fWHR tracks with the “compact, blocky” male face look — every component pushes the same direction. (See sexual dimorphism for how those components interact.)

Can you change your fWHR?

Bone width and height are fixed past puberty. But apparent fWHR is moveable:

• Body fat — facial fat fills out the cheek area and increases apparent width. People often look “wider” when they gain weight, even with no bone change.
• Masseter development — a developed masseter muscle widens the lower face. Doesn’t affect classical fWHR (which is upper-face), but changes the overall wide/long impression.
• Hairstyle — shorter sides increase apparent height; longer sides reduce it
• Facial hair — full beard adds apparent vertical height; clean shave shortens it

The cleanest free lever for moving apparent fWHR is body composition. Going from skinny-fat to lean-and-muscular shifts the face from “rectangular” to “trapezoidal” in a way that reads as higher fWHR even when the actual bones haven’t moved.

What Fazly does

Your scan measures fWHR directly from the front-on photo and reports it as a number plus a percentile against the adult population. The app contextualizes the number: high fWHR boosts your masculinity sub-score but doesn’t necessarily boost your overall attractiveness — at very high values, the face starts looking aggressive or unapproachable, which costs points on long-term-attractiveness research.

Take front-on scans with head perfectly level (Frankfurt plane) — head tilt swings apparent fWHR by 5–10% in either direction.