Here’s how people judge you based on your face
How much your face resembles a smile can convince people of how strong, sociable or competent you are
Scientists have identified countless ways that we judge people based on their looks, even when those judgments have no basis in reality.
“We form these immediate impressions of people — we just can’t help it,” Alexander Todorov, a psychology professor at Princeton University, told Business Insider.
Todorov’s lab tests responses to computer-generated faces to model traits associated with perceived attractiveness, trustworthiness, competence, and more.
Todorov warns that these impressions are highly inaccurate. People have many biases, including halo effects — where we assume one positive trait will be followed by others — and stereotypes — where we associate behaviours with looks. Still, the professor says it’s worth understanding them, if only to fight them.
Source: research overview in Todorov, Alexander et al. 2015, “Social Attributions from Faces: Determinants, Consequences, Accuracy, and Functional Significance” in “Annual Review of Psychology 2015,” 15.4
We associate baby-faced appearance with physical weakness, naïvety, submissiveness, honestness, kindness, and warmth. Baby-faced appearance includes relatively larger eyes, a rounder face, a larger ratio of cranium to chin.
Source: research overview in Zebrowitz, Leslie 2011, “Ecological and Social Approaches to Face Perception” in “Oxford Handbook of Face Perception,” 40
Yes, women tend to have more baby-faced qualities than men
Source: research overview in Zebrowitz 2011,” 38
Source: research overview in Zebrowitz 2011, 36
Perceived competence increases from left to right in the faces below. Associated traits include darker skin — in this case a factor of gender, not race — and attractiveness.
Source: Todorov Lab
Perceived dominance increases from left to right. Associated traits include include darker skin and masculine features
Source: Todorov Lab
Perceived extraversion increases from left to right. Associated traits include face width and resemblance to a smile.
Source: Todorov Lab
Perceived likability increases from left to right. Associated traits include attractiveness and resemblance to a smile.
Source: Todorov Lab
Perceived threat increases from left to right. Associated traits include masculine features and resemblance to an angry expression.
Source: Todorov Lab
Perceived trustworthiness increases from left to right. Associated traits include feminine features and resemblance to a smile.
Source: Todorov Lab
Source: Walker, Mirella and Thomas Vetter 2016, “Faced with exclusion: Perceived facial warmth and competence influence moral judgments of social exclusion” in “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”
Another type of facial bias: more typical faces are viewed as more trustworthy. This bias contributes to racism and xenophobia.
Source: research overview in Todorov 2015, 15.9
Source: research overview in Todorov 2015, 15.9
Troublingly, people also judge criminality and remorsefulness based on faces, as both Todorov and Walker have shown. Perceived criminality increases from left to right in the top two rows; perceived remorsefulness in the bottom two.
Source: Funk, Friederike, Mirella Walker and Alexander Todorv 2016, “Modeling perceptions of criminality and remorse from faces using a data-driving computational approach” in “Cognition and Emotion”
Studies have shown that facial bias affects who we vote for, date, hire, prosecute, convict, and more.
Source: research overview in Todorov 2015, 15.11
Although the face can give some clues to behavior, Todorov argues that people tend to imagine false insights or overemphasise real ones, when they would be better off consulting other information. Also links between facial morphology and behaviour may only be the result of societal bias, where people act a certain way because we expect them do, and facial bias just reinforces these stereotypes.