NEWBORN babies challenge the view that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, according to new research.

Scientists have found that infants just a few hours old show they prefer attractive faces.

Placed before photos of a fashion model and a plain-looking woman, a newborn will be drawn to the prettier face.

The finding undermines the theory that people develop an idea of attractiveness from the experience of mixing with different individuals. Instead, it appears that everyone is born with a pre-programmed understanding of what makes a person attractive.

Dr Alan Slater, reader in developmental psychology at the University of Exeter, who led the study, said: "Attractiveness is not simply in the eye of the beholder. It's in the eye of the infant right from the moment of birth, and possibly before birth."

The research team tested infants averaging two days old, but the group included some born only a few hours earlier.

Each baby was held in front of the pictures and closely watched by "off stage" researchers to the left and right. The observers followed the baby's eyes and pressed a button whenever the infant looked at the image on their side.

Generally babies would flick their gaze between the pictures. But the experiment found that they spent significantly more time looking at the fashion model.

The same behaviour was seen in numerous different infants.

It only changed when the "plain" face was replaced by a picture of the baby's mother, which proved an irresistible draw.

The babies' actions suggest that we are born with the mental image of an idealised face wired into their heads, said Dr Slater.

Previous studies had shown that when the features of a large number of different adults of the same age are averaged out, the result is an extremely "attractive" individual.

It is possible that newborn babies were programmed to respond to this "prototype".

"The argument goes that they prefer to look at the attractive face because it mostly closely resembles the prototype," said Dr Slater.

He added that in later life people still recognised conventionally attractive faces, even though they might choose a plain partner with whom they feel more suited.

Dr Slater said: "Have we disproved the theory that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Yes and no. A lot of it is hard wired, and you can't get away from the hard wiring. We can judge whether or not an individual is conventionally attractive even if we may not prefer that individual."

Another study carried out by Dr Slater's team suggested that babies were also born with an innate ear for music. Tests showed they preferred it when Vivaldi was played forwards rather than backwards.

Research also demonstrated that an infant can spot its mother's face from a group of similar faces as little as 15 hours after birth.

"These findings suggest that newborns begin life with some understanding of people, and that they have some awareness of the fact that they are uniquely human," said Dr Slater.