At face value: What our looks say about us
Hillary Clinton’s obvious look of disdain for her opponent in the last TV debate has been dubbed Resting Hillary Face. But scientific research suggests your face really can determine your fortune. Eleanor Steafel reports on the power of expression.
The adage may have it that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but ever since Aristotle first wrote about the art of physiognomy, people have thought it possible to deduce character traits from someone’s facial features. Though now dismissed as pseudo-science, perhaps there’s a kernel of truth in the idea that someone’s face can shape their destiny. A Princeton University study showed it takes us a tenth of a second to size up a person and, rightly or wrongly, we react to them accordingly.
Hence, research suggests that those with what we perceive to be dominant faces (fuller jaws and thicker brows) are more likely to make CEO, that juries are more inclined to believe baby-faced men are not guilty of certain crimes, and that politicians with competent looking faces (higher cheekbones and angular jaws) have a greater chance of being elected.
“It’s all about perception, not actual behaviour, and of course much of this may be a self-fulfilling prophecy: that people who look competent are often given better jobs and then become more competent at them,” explains Dr. Lisa DeBruine, who runs the Face Research Lab in the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Glasgow, and studies how — and why — people respond differently to different face shapes.
“Research shows there are 13 main attributes people are most likely to spontaneously judge about a face: aggressiveness, attractiveness, compassion, confidence, dominance, emotional stability, intelligence, meanness, responsibility, sociability, trustworthiness, happiness and weirdness.
“But the way we perceive someone basically all boils down to how dominant or trustworthy we think they look. We automatically read facial cues to try to assess a person’s desire to do us harm or good versus their ability to do so.”
DeBruine maintains that whatever those scientifically shaky “how to tell your personality from your face-shape” quizzes might have you believe, the width between a person’s eyes or the shape of their chin won’t actually tell you anything about their personality. But that doesn’t stop our subconscious making snap judgments.
“Social conditioning plays a huge part in what we gauge from looking at someone, when all we have to go on is what we can immediately see,” says DeBruine. “So for most people, a competent-looking face looks trustworthy and dominant, but not too dominant. And we tend to associate competent faces with the kinds of people who are in charge in our society.
“But because men still tend to be at the top in the majority of industries, we also associate these attributes with masculinity.”
“Meanwhile, women’s eyes tend to be a bit rounder, and wider eyes tend to come across as more trustworthy.”
According DeBruine, the kind of face undecided voters are drawn to partly depends on how under threat they feel at the time of voting.
“During wartime, people are looking for a dominant leader. Facial width is the simplest measure of how people perceive dominance, so a politician with a wider, more masculine face might be more successful than one with a narrow, more feminine face,” she says.
So what does this mean for Clinton: caught in a catch-22 whereby she has to be seen to look dominant and competent, without eschewing her femininity.
After the first televised debate at the end of September, Clinton was accused of having what was dubbed Resting Hillary Face, for her tendency to let her disdain for her opponent shine through on her face rather than in her speeches.
“The trouble is, for women, looking more masculine also makes you look older, and age is not on Hillary’s side in this election,” says DeBruine.
“One thing she does do is to open her eyes wider at certain points when she is talking because it makes her seem more trustworthy.”
THE WAY WE PERCEIVE SOMEONE BASICALLY ALL BOILS DOWN TO HOW DOMINANT OR TRUSTWORTHY WE THINK THEY LOOK. — DR. LISA DeBRUINE, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW