I noticed that when reading news about trials, I found most of the murderers’ faces… murderous. That’s true for civil/economic cases; though the % isn’t as high as killers’, but definitely >50%. This, of course, could be heavily biased: we knew they were convicts already, and find shapes in their faces that confirm the belief.
On a related note, when I look in the mirror, I like the view. At the same time, looking at old mugshot photos, I see a dumb person (well, maybe not that stupid, but certainly not as bright as now). Coincidentally, I’ve learned a lot about many things in recent years.
Those observations lead to some questions:
Can, and should, we judge a person by their face alone? If yes, how much weight should we give to our opinion? Personal anecdotes are nice & appreciated, but I’ll only be convinced if there are scientific research on the topic. I haven’t been able to find the right key words for such findings, if there are.
Do changes in a person’s life really show on their face? I think a rather fun exercise for this is someone posting before & after pics of a person, and those who don’t know him/her guess what happened.
Note: I doubt this is really a factual question, at least not one that anyone has the knowledge to answer.
Can we judge a person solely by their face? Probably not accurately. Should we? Absolutely not.
Do changes in a person’s life show on their face? I would expect so, some changes much more than others. Faces express states of mind through emotions; they also show changes due to aging and other physical factors. I don’t see the fun in any of that.
People with Down Syndrome are fairly recognizable. And if you go to an institution that cares for people with developmental disabilities, I’m not sure how many have Down Syndrome in particular, but a strangely happy look with not very many teeth is (or at least was - when I was younger) pretty common. It’s pretty easy to spot.
Regarding the factual or not argument, IMO there could be lots of way to conduct scientific research. 1 is to show people faces of murderers & not-murderers, and ask them which is which. If the result deviates significantly from 50%, then we can say with some certainty that face-judging is effective.
About the face change, what I wanted to explore more in the OP is along the spectrum on good-evil, and maybe smart-slow or wise-dumb / knowledgeable-ignorant. The example of Down people reinforces the notion that intelligence shows on face.
In mugshot photos of murderers, could it be argued that you’re looking at a picture of a person who is not 100% satisfied to be in a situation where a mugshot photo is being taken?
Also, unless you have some empirical criteria for ‘murderous’, there’s nowhere to start.
There may be an aspect of self fulfilling prophecy, which as a side effect would make the OP true to a degree.
If people are less welcoming towards you, or even apprehensive, that may affect your behaviour. It may make you less sociable or more aggressive. And this kind of treatment is more likely if your appearance is less attractive, or intimidating, say.
I think the great president-elect’s mugshot photo proves this premise wrong.
He wants to murder, particulary certain groups and pretty much all non-blonde women.
But wow, what a weak “threatening face” mugshot he has. Glowering at the camera, but the absurd combination of the hair, the orange skin, the weird expression and the somewhat hard to feel, but very real, sense of pity for the dotard undermine that “tough guy” attitude.
ETA: I have at least two, probably three extant mugshot pics. I photograph well, so even though this is basically a guy pressing a button on a machine he barely understands, i’m going to look OK. Probably not good, but way, way better than Trump.
ETA - noticed the forum, I will not contribute again to this hijack. Apologies to mods.
The local talk radio morning show once had a game between the DJs, based on you might see at the state fair (from which they were broadcasting). “Guess what I saw from a one-word clue.”
The one that made me laugh and nod in agreement. The clue: “Unempoyable.” The answer: “Neck tattoo.”
I will say that, in my experience, most of the time when I felt someone was snarky or arrogant just by looking at their face, it was later confirmed in-person in experience and they were indeed snarky and sarcastic. There’s almost like a built-in sneer to the face.
There have been times when a non-snarky face surprised me by being snarky, but I can’t recall a single time a snarky-faced person turned out to not be snarky.
You’ll never get a second chance to make a great first impression. Like it not: we all do it. In fractions of a second. And quite consistently, curiously enough. But is it accurate? Your guess is as good as mine. But that we all judge people by their looks is a fact.
I suggest you try “judging a person in milliseconds”.
It is not accurate enough just to look at the face. What you want to do is carefully feel and measure the person’s skull for telltale bumps and indentations. Then you will for sure know everything about their mental development and capabilities, including any deficiencies or dangerous criminal tendencies.
And note they excluded photos with facial tattoos and obviously menacing expressions, which would likely be much more common in criminals.
There’s also some evidence that personality traits like trustworthiness and intelligence can be identified from photographs, but the evidence is mixed.
Should you judge a person by their face? If you are in a situation where someone makes you feel unsafe, it’s probably best to act on your intuition. If you’re talking about treating them differently in something like sentencing, then absolutely not. If it even exists, it would be a statistical affect and a great miscarriage of justice to implement on an individual level.
Thanks, @DemonTree . So evil definitely shows. If they included the omitted features, which very well happens in real life, then the identification rate would no doubt shoot up the roof.
I’d bet that intelligence also shows if they conduct more extensive research. My hunch is the same applies to trustworthiness, though to a lesser degree.
We just need to find out how accurate it is (in general), so we could assign a proper weight to it in our overall judgement.
