This effect was discovered back in 1990: a portrait synthesized by a computer from 16 faces was rated by the subjects much higher than each of the 16 ordinary “original” faces.
This same effect extends to our perception of dogs, cars, even… wristwatches. Dr. Winkelman and his colleagues from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Denver (USA) conducted an experiment that showed that the generalized prototype is attractive to us because the brain recognizes it more easily. So, if you “prepare” the brain for the perception of a certain object, it will find a response in the soul. This explains cultural differences in the understanding of beauty. What is beautiful is what we are used to seeing and what our brain “understands”.