‘There is not a face that is not on the verge of dissolving like a face in a dream.’ –Borges
The new research suggests we are more skilled at “reading faces” than we knew. People are surprisingly adept at assessing sexual orientation from headshots. Five-year-olds can predict election outcomes based on photos of the candidates. We can even guess whether a face belongs to a Democrat or a Republican at a rate better than chance, according to a forthcoming study out of Princeton.
previously:
Physiognomy (inferring personality traits from facial features) was outlawed by King George II in 1743, and has for many years been dismissed as a pseudoscience. However, modern research is showing not only that observers readily make inferences about other people’s traits based on their facial appearance, but that these inferences are often highly accurate. For example, people can use facial appearance to judge a man or woman’s sexual orientation and to predict the success of chief executives.
Now Justin Carre and colleagues have added to this burgeoning literature by showing that observers are able to predict the aggressiveness of a man by the look of his face.
