Most of us humans have a disposition to draw drastic conclusions about someone’s personality based solely on facial appearance. Yes, no matter how intelligent, authentic and charismatic you are, there will always be someone willing to judge you by your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your hair, your face. We all do this unconsciously, but some draw faster and more stubborn conclusions from facial features than others, according to various recent studies.
And that becomes a problem. Especially when it is these people who are responsible for hiring employees in companies and it is their decisions that can change people’s lives.
The study. Recent research by Japanese psychologists published in the Royal Society concludes that there is currently an “exaggerated impact of facial features on social decision-making processes”. That is, we judge people harshly at the first glimpse of their appearance. In a series of experiments involving more than 300 participants, Atsunobu Suzuki and his colleagues found what they call “face-based trait inferences” (FBTIs).
Basically, the subjects ranked people and made a series of judgments of people based on their physical appearance. While they all did, the study authors found that some were more extreme (whether the judgment was positive or negative). And this held true even when the age, gender and ethnicity of the participants were controlled for.
Why? First impressions have a psychological function. Professor Alexander Todorov explains in his book Face value: The irresistible Influence of First Impression that in evolutionary history human beings have not needed to use physical appearance to judge their fellow men: “Humans used to live in extended families and did not associate with more than 100 people. It was very easy to tell who was who.”
However, when we begin to live in large cities, where space is shared with millions of strangers, a cognitive problem appears because there are no clues to know what a stranger is like. “Facial features have become that clue,” Todorov explains.
Problems. Making snap judgments can unfortunately also lead to stereotyping. For example, thinking that people with a particular physical characteristic must all be the same. And what’s even worse: those first impressions are hard to change. “Happy, feminine faces tend to be perceived as more trustworthy than tough, masculine-looking ones,” the authors explain, noting that people draw their conclusions from a general impression rather than from specific traits such as size. of the nose or the thickness of the lips.
A factor to find work. Various studies throughout history have emphasized that this unconscious bias persists in hiring decision-making. A 2018 study sent two versions of nearly identical CVs to apply for jobs. The only difference was the name: Adam Smith on one and Ravindra Thalwal on the other. Ravindra received half the responses compared to the British name.
And that also works for handsome men and women, who tend to be hired more due to the “halo effect”, something collected in other studies. “Attractive faces are perceived as desirable and are often immediately assigned attributes of reliability and competence.”
In politics, the other way around. In 2005, a study published in the journal Science showed that it was possible to predict the outcome of an election using the immediate judgments made about the faces of the candidates. And not only that. It’s also the other way around: First impressions of strangers’ faces are heavily influenced by political partisanship.
A study published in PLOS ONE reveals that when it comes to dating, knowing your political affiliation has a significant effect on how your appearance is perceived. And it suggests that first impressions are influenced by those political preferences. According to the research, when the political affiliation coincided, the sympathy of the face increased. Conversely, when the affiliation did not match, likability decreased.
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