1. An appeal estimation system for estimating a personal appeal of a candidate individual to an observer comprising: a digital image capture device for capturing a digital image of the candidate individual; a soft-copy display; a data processing system; and a personal appeal model memory system communicatively connected to the data processing system and storing information about a set of proxy individuals including digital images of each proxy individual and personal appeal values of each proxy individual to the observer; and a program memory system communicatively connected to the data processing system and storing instructions configured to cause the data processing system to implement a method for estimating the personal appeal of the candidate individual to the observer comprising: a) capturing one or more digital images of the candidate individual using the digital image capture device; b) determining image similarity metrics between the digital images for the candidate individual and the digital images for each proxy individual; c) determining similarity values between the candidate individual and each proxy individual responsive to the determined image similarity metrics; d) estimating the personal appeal of the candidate individual to the observer by determining a weighted combination of the personal appeal values for the proxy individuals, wherein the weighted combination uses weighting coefficients that are determined responsive to the similarity values between the candidate individual and the corresponding proxy individual; and e) displaying an indication of the estimated personal appeal on the soft-copy display.