Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150707-is-faceism-spoiling-your-life

by AdamFernandez • 11 years ago

56 66 11 years ago

This was submitted with the title of the article and then changed to this ("Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise") in the time it took me to read it. Isn't the policy here that article submissions should be submitted with the title of the article?

jcfrei• 11 years ago

I agree, this seems like mod intervention solely aimed at discrediting the article (ie. making it appear shallow and unscientific). I'm not saying this is a great article but the edit is unnecessary.

asyncwords• 11 years ago

Keep in mind that the submitter can edit the title for up to one (two?) hours after submitting it.

savanaly• 11 years ago

The new title (who knows if it was changed by a mod or by the user) is more level headed, analytical and less click baity in my estimation. Not sure if those are good things, but I don't see how the new title makes it seem less scientific, if anything it does the opposite right?.

lallysingh• 11 years ago

Odd, when I read "features" I assumed software features. I expected an article on user perceptions of software by feature-set.

I guess I'm saying that there's a lot of open space for interpretation?

zachb• 11 years ago

The author completely glosses over a crucial fact: an individual's face is representative of the lifestyle that he or she lives. Fat; thin; tan; pale; bearded; bald. Is your hair buzzed military grade, or does it spill over your shoulders? Do you take care of your skin? Do you wax your eyebrows?

Our faces certainly tell some sort of story, but there's more to it than bone structure and brow size.

Alex3917• 11 years ago

Also, even your facial structure most likely changes throughout your life depending on the last couple years of your levels of dominance, trustworthiness, competence, etc. Just look at Dick Cheney.

plonh3• 11 years ago

What??

justinhj• 11 years ago

I think that was an important and deliberate part of the research. The images in the article were specifically created to show the subtle facial features they were interested in.

Sure if someone has a fat face and unkempt facial hair or a swastika tattoo on their forehead then you will make conscious and unconscious judgements about them. But the study seems to show clear bias without such prominent clues.

itg• 11 years ago

The entire article is about how bone structure can make a difference about how others perceive us, even if everything else is the same. The first sentence of the article gives a hypothetical of non-identical twins with the same exact lifestyle.

gwern• 11 years ago

a hypothetical of non-identical twins with the same exact lifestyle.

Which is a ridiculous hypothetical on the face of it. Non-identical twins, fraternal twins, are hardly more similar than siblings are. And siblings can differ quite a bit. Even if they somehow wound up the same on a few measured characteristics, they will still be rather different on many other characteristics and the hypothetical shows nothing.

m_fayer2• 11 years ago

Absolutely. I'd also add that your face is a reflection of your personality and average emotional temperature.

Your "neutral expression" will, over many years of muscle memory and habit, settle into some particular arrangement. People who tend toward bitterness, mistrust, anger, or anxiety - will look it, and inspire vague anxiety in anyone who deals with them. If, on the other hand, your neutral expression broadcasts poise, optimism, peace, wit, or good humor - the subtle good will that this generates will eventually add up to a significantly better experience of humanity. In this way, the way we look can be self-reinforcing.

In a way, we all get the face we deserve.

pavel_lishin3• 11 years ago

Aside from tending towards certain emotions, I'd wager that urban vs. rural residents probably have different default facial expressions.

I've heard people refer to "Moscow face" (though oddly, not "New York face"), where people's expressions are blandly neutral, tending towards negative - it's a way of adjusting to living in a large urban center.

I'm not sure what my default face while I'm out in public is, but I've definitely got a certain expression I've learned to put on when I'm walking by people trying to sell me something, beg me for something, recruit me for something. I've had people start walking towards me, and then instantly back away when I slip that particular mask on.

It's pretty great, but I'd wager that it's an adaptation that someone living in Farmersville, TX doesn't need to use very often.

drzaiusapelord3• 11 years ago

People who tend toward bitterness, mistrust, anger, or anxiety - will look it

This is total pseudo-science, like a modern phrenology. Your resting face and how that's interpreted is meaningless. For example, in some cultures no one smiles in photos and smiling at others on the street or in the workplace is a very weird thing to do, but here in the US its extremely common. If an American went to one of those cultures, he'd think everyone was an angry murderer.

Not to mention, many cheery and upbeat men and women having what's comically called "resting bitch face." They just don't look particularly cheery when not making an expression, usually people with "ethnic" features like deeply set eyes, chubbier jowls, wider faces, darker eyes, natural 'bags' under eyes, etc that compared to an Anglo person makes them look angry or annoyed. As someone with this ethnicity (Mediterranean descent) its something I have to constantly work on as to not intimidate others.

I think your take on things is a very "white" and Western view. Different cultures and ethnicity have different facial standards and its impossible to make broad statements like these.

drzaiusapelord3• 11 years ago

face is representative of the lifestyle that he or she lives. Fat; thin; tan; pale; bearded; bald.

That completely ignores congenital conditions, skin diseases, losing the genetic lottery, etc. There are a lot of people who lead truly shitty lives and who look great and vice-versa. I think we're buying way too much into genetic determinism here and this all sounds like shades of eugenics.

Its incredible that even geeks buy into "Prettier people are better people" silliness.

mhurron2• 11 years ago

Its incredible that even geeks

It's almost like no matter what you label yourself as you're still human, as if these labels are really meaningless.

cafard• 11 years ago

Bald is representative of my life span, but of my lifestyle only to the extent that it has helped me to live to be old enough to lose the hair.

gadders• 11 years ago

If you had a combover I would judge you hard.

mhurron2• 11 years ago

Bald is representative of my life span

No it's not, unless your saying that outside of any specific disease or condition you lived to puberty. Many people start balding in their late teens, others never do.

That you balded is representative that there is probably someone in your ancestry that was bald. That's pretty much it.

sosuke• 11 years ago

I really don't like the sound of this, just how far does it need to go? The end result is everyone being exactly the same as everyone else right? Same DNA even? But somehow if you made that society they would find a way to tell each other apart, and make snap judgments.

In the past, this “face-ism” (as Olivola and his colleagues call it) was considered an unfortunate fact of life. But the more they come to understand its pervasive influence, the more they are beginning to wonder if it should be treated like any other prejudice. If so, it could be time to take action.

mc32• 11 years ago

While wanting to wipe innate human tendencies borders on dangerous, it's not a bad idea to be conscious about it.

We should not want to begin proscribing people's behavior in minutiae --we have enough laws telling you what you can't do, but modifying psyche to counter these tendencies can cut both ways.

Imagine people suing for someone not liking them because they had mentioned something about their appearance.

toolsadmin2• 11 years ago

More PC rubbish. Soon we'll all have to wear brown paper bags over our heads and speak through a gender-neutral, computer generated microphone voice lest someone gets upset or gets an "unfair" advantage.

adrusi• 11 years ago

The article didn't suggest that people with more "desirable" faces do anything to prevent an unfair advantage. It merely brought to attention a universal prejudice, with a suggestion that people, especially those making decisions wrt employment, be aware of the prejudices, so that they don't unfairly disadvantage candidates, and so that they don't dismiss someone who might be a better candidate solely on the basis of their looks.

toolsadmin2• 11 years ago

Sure it did. How about here: “The question is, do we want to spend government money protecting bad looking people when – it’s my personal view – other groups merit more attention?”

Thats as much of a hint on government regulation as it can be.

pixl972• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

carlmcqueen• 11 years ago

This article seems to be talking out the reality that our brains handle the big data of life by generalization, ignoring that in small samples things can be quite different than the group average.

When I see a big, tattoo covered individual I feel more nervous than unmarked, average sized individuals. Having grown up with a sister who eventually majored in photography I know plenty of tattoo'd people who are amazing people and often artistic and creative, but my brain still sends the signals.

We are very likely judged whether we like it or not by appearance, but I feel there is plenty we can do about some of it. I take this article to remind myself to own my appearance and what is says and be conscious that it may be deciding things for me.

Thriptic• 11 years ago

When I see a big, tattoo covered individual I feel more nervous than unmarked, average sized individuals. Having grown up with a sister who eventually majored in photography I know plenty of tattoo'd people who are amazing people and often artistic and creative, but my brain still sends the signals.

I'm a fairly large individual, and I discovered recently that my resting face is normally somewhat of a scowl. I've had instances where I will be walking around a neighborhood which I feel somewhat nervous and unsafe in only to have people walk across the street when they see me coming. I was perplexed by this until I realized much to my amusement that I am actually the type of person that people are afraid of bumping into based on appearances, and so my fear was unjustified.

frandroid• 11 years ago

Wait, we judge people by their looks, more often than not subconsciously?!

Irene• 11 years ago

I suppose applicants with faces judged as competent and dominant (and looking like Zuckerberg, etc) tend to come out on top after video pitches in startup incubator applications.

mashematician• 11 years ago

Couldn't help but be reminded of Ted Chiang's "Liking What You See: A Documentary" http://www.ibooksonline.com/88/Text/liking.html

blfr• 11 years ago

Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge. And, of course, prior information should change the way you view new information. I don't see how it can do more harm than good if you can do better than chance. Neither would I be so confident that I can do better than millions of years of evolution, especially by reading resumes.

We can guess what particular traits make people seem less trustworthy. For example, supposedly men with wider faces are more likely to act immorally (deceive, cheat). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21733897

drzaiusapelord3• 11 years ago

"This gene causes this $complex_behavior" is practically modern phrenology. These types of studies are questionable and controversial. Not to mention unethical behaviors are often cultural constructs that in one culture is fine (being gay in the US) and another considered unethical (being gay in Russia.)

Not too long ago many scientists, including HN's beloved Nikola Tesla, were loudly advocating for further and deeper eugenics laws because "obviously" the negro or the Jew was a sub-human. We're still seeing some of this today with "genetics" replacing "characteristics."

"As sex differences in facial structure, generally, are at least partially due to increased testosterone concentrations in boys, testosterone likely plays a role in determining facial WHR, specifically, as well."

This is more academia-led "War on Boys." This kid has extra testosterone? He must be a rapist or a murderer. Shame the "rational scientific" crowd never seems to show skepticism at truly questionable research because it was published somewhere, so it must be true!

nitrogen• 11 years ago

I think you're taking down a strawman amalgam of misconceptions that few people, if any, actually believe all at once.

slipjack4• 11 years ago

Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge.

I'd be pretty careful about this line of argument. What we think of as a clue to underlying qualities is cultural... for example, one of the biggest superficial differences in people is the color of their skin. What underlying qualities does skin color clue us in to?

In the US and Europe, we have a long history of trying to find the ties between visible and non-visible qualities. Phrenology, eugenics, Blacks as having "inferior intelligence", the belief that women are prone to hysteria - all were attempts to find that link.

yummyfajitas5• 11 years ago

The history of seeking correlations between visible and invisible qualities has been largely successful. For instance, it's fairly well known that border collies can be successfully trained to herd sheep, but wolves cannot.

Experiments have provided significant evidence that these behavioral traits are genetic: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/dogs-b...

Further, in the US and Europe, we also have a long history of trying to find substances which kill infections. These failed until we found penicillin. Citing a few false claims (not all the ones you've cited are even known to be false) and using this as evidence that all such claims must be false is a logical fallacy.

kleer001• 11 years ago

What underlying qualities does skin color clue us in to?

Depends on the context. Also, I bet that's the topic of at least several dissertations in the last few decades.

StavrosK4• 11 years ago

What underlying qualities does skin color clue us in to

What underlying qualities does height clue us in to? Are you sure that, even though traits regularly correlate with other traits, skin color is the one trait that has no correlation with absolutely anything else? I don't find that very likely, personally.

yummyfajitas5• 11 years ago

It's been shown in at least one experiment that superficial appearances are correlated with underlying qualities. Specifically, simply by looking at two people one can choose the one better at math 55% of the time!

https://mega.co.nz/#!6UxzVLIA!BVUOujU76VnhZM45QE4N2oFz0yLRTf...

The title and abstract of the study (discussing gender stereotypes) more or less ignores the truly interesting bits of this study. Gender stereotypes reduce profits by 0.1% but discrimination by appearance increases profits by 11.4%!

Obviously actual math tests are better than appearance.

firethief• 11 years ago

I'd rather not install an app to read that, but presumably they are measuring who is better educated in math. I would expect the correlation to be mostly explained by different ethnic groups in the location the study was conducted having different access to education, cultural values, and expectations placed on them.

It would go a long way toward distinguishing between those two possibilities if a computer judged the faces - find the eigenface(s) of different mathematical ability levels and see if there's a lot of correlation between those and ethnicity, or if features alone are the predictor.

Even if it is features alone though, I would expect a major involvement of education and self-fulfilling expectations: take a starting state where there is no correlation between facial features and math aptitude. Everyone would have their own beliefs about what faces are good at math (humans always see patterns). Some of those beliefs would happen to be similar, so people with certain features would be steered more toward math. As time passes, the bias becomes more legitimate and more self-perpetuating. The end result is a socially-imposed link between particular visible traits and ability in math.

dottedmag• 11 years ago

So, how to beat the game then? Say, an instruction how to apply a touch of makeup before going to the business meeting or to the interview.

facepalm2• 11 years ago

Makeup is certainly a traditional way to game it - that's essentially the point of makeup. Supposedly in medieval times women even took laudanum to make their pupils wider.

lsniddy• 11 years ago

People ask me for directions all the time, and I've always been convinced this was the reason. I also think body size and appearance plays a part

Wouldn't it be neat if you offered a service that would rate you on some important dimensions so you new your relative score?

charlieflowers• 11 years ago

If you accept that our brains automatically make these judgements and therefore we're unlikely to be able to train ourselves out of it, then the most interesting question is:

"How do you hack this?"

What can an individual do to maximize good judgements? How can you influence the amount of competence or dominance or trustworthiness others automatically attribute to your face?

biturd• 11 years ago

Maybe we are not born this way, and it is our life and work experiences that make our faces that way. There is the obvious, construction worker, out in the sun, their face it going to get weathered and a more "hard" looking individual will come out. And perhaps he got into construction as a result of somewhat challenging life, which made him frown all the time so he got frown lines, which makes a person look a certain way, even distrusting.

Many things can influence how we look. And from this article it seems the markers are very subtle. I would almost expect to see people getting minor cosmetic surgery, where some lines are removed, some accentuated, an eyebrow tuck here, an eye pull there, a lip push here, a wrinkle added there.

All these are minimal invasive compared to full on look altering cosmetic surgery. We just have to figure out what to polish and what to prematurely age and distress.

ericdykstra• 11 years ago

Can anyone share actionable tips about how to make a better first impression?

Of course, much of beauty, attraction, first impression, etc is genetic, as this article points out. But what are some aspects that can be controlled? Anything from daily preparation stuff (what types of clothes we wear, what colors, to shave or not to shave) to the way we walk, or the way we talk, our facial expression, how we greet someone new, etc...

If anyone knows of some research or has any anecdotes, I'd like to hear of it!

th0waway• 11 years ago

Category view versus inside view, as expounded upon in another link on HN today: http://edge.org/events/the-edge-master-class-2007-a-short-co...

Funny how category view seems to work for everything EXCEPT human beings </sarcasm>

facepalm2• 11 years ago

In this video Dan Ariely mentions some interesting research about the effects of beauty: http://bigthink.com/videos/dan-ariely-on-advantages-of-physi...

Apparently research has shown that while taller people tend to earn more money, it depends on their height during puberty. People grow at different times, so some people who are tall later in life might not have been so in puberty, while others where already tall in puberty.

The hypothesis is that the effect of tall people earning more might actually be the result of them being more confident, due to already having been tall in their teens. Some effects of beauty might show the same relation.

Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

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