4 ms·

Other factors to control for include piercings, haircut, facial hair, glasses, makeup, any clothes in the picture (shirt/hat), hygiene, and tattoos. However, i

Other factors to control for include piercings, haircut, facial hair, glasses, makeup, any clothes in the picture (shirt/hat), hygiene, and tattoos. However, it really wouldn't surprise me if some aspects of personality can, on average, be discerned from facial appearances. In hunter-gatherer days, being able to make an accurate snap judgment of a stranger's trustworthiness would be a big evolutionary advantage. And it wouldn't surprise me either if genes that affect one's personality (e.g. those relating to testosterone) affect one's appearance as well.

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  - pg 18y ago
    You're on the wrong track. Lots of users create new accounts when they want to say something unpc. They're not all one person.
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
but if this became widespread it would then become advantageous to be able to fool other people's sense of trustworthiness by displaying the trustworthy physical characteristics while actually being untrustworthy. ad infinitum...
- lunchbox 18y ago
  Excellent point! The old evolutionary arms race. I think in the end, the set of genes that wins this game of cat and mouse will be the one that has the strongest selection pressure. For example, being able to detect untrustworthy people might increase my survival chances by x%, and being able to fool people might increase my survival chances by y%. If x >> y, then one would expect that most modern-day humans would be good at sniffing out untrustworthy people; if y >> x, then modern-day humans would have difficulty doing this, since the untrustworthy people have evolved an extremely strong ability to escape detection.
kingkongrevenge 18y ago
> if some aspects of personality can, on average, be discerned from facial appearances Testosterone and estrogen levels are quite apparent in facial structure. People with male jaw lines and brows are more assertive.

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- pg 18y ago
  You're on the wrong track. Lots of users create new accounts when they want to say something unpc. They're not all one person.

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

but if this became widespread it would then become advantageous to be able to fool other people's sense of trustworthiness by displaying the trustworthy physical characteristics while actually being untrustworthy. ad infinitum...

lunchbox 18y ago
Excellent point! The old evolutionary arms race. I think in the end, the set of genes that wins this game of cat and mouse will be the one that has the strongest selection pressure. For example, being able to detect untrustworthy people might increase my survival chances by x%, and being able to fool people might increase my survival chances by y%. If x >> y, then one would expect that most modern-day humans would be good at sniffing out untrustworthy people; if y >> x, then modern-day humans would have difficulty doing this, since the untrustworthy people have evolved an extremely strong ability to escape detection.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago

> if some aspects of personality can, on average, be discerned from facial appearances Testosterone and estrogen levels are quite apparent in facial structure. People with male jaw lines and brows are more assertive.