Topic 4: Lecture two

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"Appearance is a valid guide to character" - Derived from ancient Greek idea that you can read someones personality from their face (Physigimonic) .

Physigimonic information has a consistent effect on decision making and creates over confidence in judgments.

It is argued that information about personality changes the perception of facial features and accordingly perceived similarity between faces.

In a representative sample of 535 Isrealies when asked if they thought you could read a person's true personality traits from just looking at their face - 75% agreed to some extent.

The face plays an important role in social processing.

Historical studies dating back to 1920 suggest that people can and do rely on faces to give them information about a persons personality. The findings regularly provide support for each other which suggests that the process of inferring traits from faces is highly reliable.

A study by Hassin and Trope (2000) questioned students about whether facial characteristics where a vaild measure of personality traits. One 3/4 said yes.

Penton Voak et al. 2006: participants completed big 5 personality questionnaire and had photo's taken. used self-reported personality trait information to see if it correlated with perceived traits. They found that precieved traits for extroversion correlated with actual extroversion. Similar results for agreeableness. Also able to correctly discriminate between high and low emotional levels in males but not females. Shows a degree of accuracy for judgments and the big 5 test.

Quist et al. 2011: Women had photos taken and completed a questionnaire assessing social dominance levels. Completed composites of faces and participants were asked to rate which was more masculine. Statistically more likely to select the dominant composite as more masculine. Facial masculines appears to be a valid and reliable cue in women for dominance.

Rhodes et al 2013: Measured whether participants could tell from images whether person would be unfaithful or not. They used past history of cheating to correlate whether or not the predictions based on facial image were accurate. Women successfullly identified those who had a past history of cheating or poaching as unfaithful. However, males could not predict other males unfaithfulness.

Attitudes and behaviors can change, studies have purely focused on judgments at zero acquaintance what about friends or relatives? Or longitudinal studies? Beliefs guide behavior, does it matter if our social judgments are correct? Can we rely on self-reported questionnaires for truthfulness in actions/behaviors in certain situations?

Good evidence to support there is a kernel of truth to the idea that facial appearance can impact someones judgement in some circumstances.

May not always be universal, some stats can show a result but have a low effect size

Little, A.C. and Roberts, S.C. (2012). Evolution, appearance and

occupational success. Evolutionary Psychology, 10, 782-801

Penton-Voak, I.S. et al. (2006). Personality judgments from natural

and composite facial images: More evidence for a “kernel of truth”

in social perception. Social Cognition, 24, 607-640.

Todorov, A. et al. (2008). Understanding evaluation of faces on

social dimensions.

Facing faces: Studies on the cognitive aspects of physiognomy.