Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 01/08/2014 11:18:01

Title: Do people judge your personality based on looks?
Post by: thedoc on 01/08/2014 11:18:01
People are quick to judge, as researchers identify facial features that people associate with personality traits in a tenth of a second...

Read the whole story on our  website by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/news/news/1000539/)

  
Title: Re: Do people judge your personality based on looks?
Post by: alancalverd on 01/08/2014 16:57:36
No need for artificial systems! When I was online dating, I just looked at hundreds of photos and picked out the ones that looked "intelligent". 95% of the women I selected by this method turned out to have a Masters or Doctorate (one had started two PhDs but been interrupted by babies), which was remarkable as less than 10% of women in my age cohort (60+ at the time) went on to postgraduate studies. I also got a better-than-chance score in differentiating between singles, divorcees and widows from a single photograph.

The question in my mind is whether something of our inherent nature is reflected in the shape and expression of our faces, or whether life leaves its mark.
Title: Re: Do people judge your personality based on looks?
Post by: RD on 01/08/2014 18:21:21
Quote from: Chris Smith
"human volunteers to rate 1,000 photographs taken from the Internet and assign them any of 16 different personality traits. These were then boiled down to three main attributes: dominance, approachability and attractiveness. "
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/news/news/1000539/

Re: "dominance"

Testosterone shapes the face and causes dominant behaviour,
so there would be an association between facial appearance and dominance ...

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2580383
Title: Re: Do people judge your personality based on looks?
Post by: CliffordK on 01/08/2014 22:57:21
Certainly when thinking of women's faces, there is also makeup, and how they choose to "decorate" the face.

I suppose with men it is also true that one would consider the choice of hair styles, tattoos, slender, muscular, beards, mustaches,  etc. 

Is it possible that two groups would interpret a face entirely differently?

One group might consider certain attributes to be an elitist/snob, and another group may find it extraordinarily attractive.

I'll probably have to track down the 16 core personality traits.
Title: Re: Do people judge your personality based on looks?
Post by: CliffordK on 02/08/2014 01:15:31
I wonder if they also did a personality test to see if people actually matched the traits that were attributed to them.
Title: Re: Do people judge your personality based on looks?
Post by: cheryl j on 04/08/2014 17:02:51
A while ago I saw a study where people were asked to guess who the winner of an election was based solely on their photos and no other information (and no prior knowledge of the actual election) and they were right about 72% of the time. The researchers concluded that there are facial characteristics that people associate with things like trustworthiness or competence.
Title: Re: Do people judge your personality based on looks?
Post by: elizbathjames on 08/08/2014 10:50:54
It's the first parameter mind takes to judge the personality.