Some folks are too quick to judge by the looks of it.
Your Back Page scribbler would like to think he’s never been a person who would judge a book by its cover.
But it is also inevitable that some degree of judgment takes place when humans meet face to face, because first impressions can be a determinant in how a relationship progresses.
These first impressions are, scientists say, formed within a 10th of a second of seeing a person’s face.
The key factor however, according to new Japanese research published this week in the journal Royal Society Open Science, is not whether this happens or not, but the extent to which some people decide other people are trustworthy, or competent, based on their face alone.
The researchers, from the University of Tokyo, used two surveys to question more than 300 participants in order to assess their beliefs in established stereotypes and to analyse the degree to which they made judgments about personality traits based on facial features.
The study found that there was a group of people who had a tendency to draw extreme conclusions about others based on their facial appearance, and that people in that group were more likely to believe stereotypes and to make quick, often unfair, judgments about people they didn’t actually know.
People with attractive faces tended to be judged as having desirable traits, like trustworthiness and competence, and more masculine-looking faces tended to be perceived as less trustworthy, study leader Atsunobu Suzuki told media.
But whether this tendency for facial bias was innate or learned was not determined.
“Origins of the biases may differ depending on the types of face judgments. For example, human tendency to perceive happy-looking faces as trustworthy may have some innate basis, whereas the association between facial femininity and low competence should probably reflect culture-specific gender stereotypes,” Suzuki said.
Which could be bad news for budding politicians who have fallen out of the ugly tree, or for innocent, but unattractive-looking, suspects in a jury trial.
The Japanese boffins suggested that the folks who were too quick to judge should become a “prime target for intervention to reduce the biasing impact of facial appearance on interpersonal judgments and choices”.
Which is a noble sentiment, but to be honest, is just never going to happen.
If you see something that looks a bit wrong, let penny@medicalrepublic.com.au be the judge of that.
