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
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.
Depends on the context. Also, I bet that's the topic of at least several dissertations in the last few decades.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Our faces certainly tell some sort of story, but there's more to it than bone structure and brow size.
"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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Wouldn't it be neat if you offered a service that would rate you on some important dimensions so you new your relative score?
I guess I'm saying that there's a lot of open space for interpretation?
Funny how category view seems to work for everything EXCEPT human beings </sarcasm>
Thats as much of a hint on government regulation as it can be.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's almost like no matter what you label yourself as you're still human, as if these labels are really meaningless.
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.
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.
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.
They could indeed be observing that "asians are good at math" stereotypes are a useful predictor, the study doesn't really give enough info to determine that one way or the other.
And when I was writing this, what I had in mind was my parents very-much-white Russian cohort, born around WW2, whose faces IMO tend to reflect the anxiety and exhaustion that accompanied most of their lives.
As for the "white" POV, whether or not there is cultural diversity in both the expression of and interpretation of emotions, and especially basic emotions, is currently an intensely researched and AFAIK unsettled question. So when you say that it's "impossible to make broad statements like these", I think the jury is still out.
How do we know? I haven't heard of any studies that compare people's first impressions against the person's actual disposition or personality.
For example, this article pointed out that honesty was a trait people tend to read from faces, but it didn't ask the question: are people's reading accurate? It assumes that an honest-looking face has no bearing on a person's actual integrity, but maybe it does. We haven't actually measured.
To be clear: I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you, just point out that we don't have any strong evidence either way. As far as I know both positions are unsupported scientifically.
I'm not saying that those claims were false and therefore all such claims are false. I'm saying that in the West we've spent a lot of time trying to prove that non-white men are inferior in different ways. Arguments like "unconscious bias comes from evolution" ignore that long history of non-white-male qualities being judged inferior.
Based on my reading, I'm quite confident in my belief that genetics explain at least 25% of behavioral differences. I haven't been convinced that it explains 50-90% (as some folks claim). I've appended below a dump of papers which I've either read or are in my queue.
Most results in this space find that white (particularly if you exclude Ashkenazi Jews) people are not the superior race, at least in popular metrics like intelligence, criminality, drug use and divorce. Those westerners trying to "prove that non-white men are inferior" probably should have realized that isn't how evidence works: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence...
http://ussc.edu.au/ussc/assets/media/docs/publications/44_Ha...
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v47/n7/full/ng.3285.html
https://infotomb.com/g99o4.pdf
https://infotomb.com/sy7jn.pdf
http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/57897#files-area
https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/38881/HECER...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1758921
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/neu.10160/pdf
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/45_Hatemi_...
http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/boucha...
http://www.matthewckeller.com/16.Hatemi.et.al.2010.Nuc.fam.a...
https://infotomb.com/evkop.pdf
https://infotomb.com/cwnp1.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2923822/#!po=50....
But again, I'm not arguing that genetics don't have any impact on behavior - I'm arguing that getting from someone else's experience of appearance to genetics to the 20% of behavior that's affected is a pretty long jump to make.
There is a cultural aspect here though as well, many Russians only smile amongst people they know, they think that people who smile at strangers are either simple or up to something, I once asked a Russian about this and he said that you pretty much never smile except with friends and it's a different kind of smile, he also said it was one of the things he liked about England in that we are fairly close to Russians in that regard.
Yeah the Russian I knew told me a story about if you where walking past a queue you joined it, didn't matter if you knew what was at the other end whatever it was could be bartered.
They where incredibly innovative in how they dealt with the lack of resources, bit like Cuba and keeping 60 year old cars on the road I guess, needs must when the devil drives.
Possibly more than you think.
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1820836,0...
See also adverse section paradox.
Amusingly, both the Russian Jokes page and the Russian Political Jokes page appear to have no Russian translations...
I was totally shocked when I saw this, but there is at least some evidence that appearance predicts more than I would otherwise expect.