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US: If you endlessly debate with your friends over whether a celebrity is attractive is not, you're fighting a losing battle.

A study has found that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

Whether or not you think someone is hot is mostly the result of your own personal experience rather than that person's genes, researchers have said.

So while someone might be generically good looking with symmetrical features, it's your unique experiences that will determine if you fancy them.

 Scientists came to the conclusion after testing 761 identical and non-identical twins who were asked to rate the attractiveness of 200 photographed faces.

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They found that some notions of beauty are fairly universal and may be hard wired into our genes - such as symmetry.

Beyond that, an individual's idea of attractiveness was shaped by that person's own unique experiences, including exposure to media images, social interactions, and even the appearance of a first boyfriend or girlfriend.

US researcher Dr Laura Germine, from Harvard University, said: "The types of environments that are important are not those that are shared by those who grow up in the same family, but are much more subtle and individual, potentially including things such as one's unique, highly personal experiences with friends or peers, as well as social and popular media."

Identical twins share nearly all the same genes, so would be expected to respond the same way to purely genetic forces.

Non-identical twins only share 50% of their genes.

The scientists wrote in the journal Current Biology: "We estimate that an individual's aesthetic preferences for faces agree about 50%, and disagree about 50%, with others.

"This fits with the common intuition that on the one hand, fashion models can make a fortune with their good looks, while on the other hand, friends can endlessly debate about who is attractive and who is not."