Baby-faces have it made in studies

Checked out from the Portales Public Library, my book-of-the-month summary for April is “The Tell: The Little Clues That Reveal Big Truths About Who We Are” by Matthew Hertenstein (2013, Basic Books, 268 pages).

The book examines our perceptions of others based on fleeting exposure to them or their photos.

Although generalizations, studies find:

• People who look others in the eye and speak clearly, quickly and moderately loud are more intelligent.

• Observers accurately gauged others’ extraversion, self-esteem and religiosity from photos.

• We assess others’ character within seconds by correctly predicting their personality traits from facial and behavioral cues.

• The average person lies 28,000 times during their life. When lying, people tend to speak in a higher-pitched voice and sound tenser or more stressed.

• Wide-faced men — but not women — are more aggressive and three times more likely to lie. Narrow-faced men are much more likely to die in conflicts with wide-faced men.

• Judges and juries are more likely to exonerate baby-faced people. Boston judges found 92 percent of mature-faced defendants guilty and 45 perfect of baby-faced ones. Being baby-faced carried as much weight as evidence.

• Being baby-faced is as much of an impediment for a man being promoted to a high-ranking job as being a woman.

• Baby-faced women are more likely to work in helping professions — such as nursing and teaching.

• Without being told their sexual orientation, subjects perceived straight white men as more likable than straight black men or gay whites. They perceived gay black men as more likable than straight black men.

• Subjects could determine sexual orientation of interviewees by watching 6-10 seconds of video of their photos, speech and body language.

• The closer to their peak ovulation the more accurately women detected men’s sexual orientation.

• Those who smiled more brightly and authentically in their childhood and adolescent photos were more likely to stay married.

• Enthusiastic teachers are perceived as knowledgeable, tolerant and organized.

• Good lecturers are expressive in their faces, hands and bodies and move around the classroom. Strangers’ ratings of college instructors’ non-verbal behavior from six seconds of video closely mirrored their end-of-semester evaluations from their students.

• Without knowing them or their companies, strangers accurately picked photos of white CEOs — based on their mature and dominant faces — who were more likely to run profitable companies.

• Black CEOs with baby faces were more likely to run prestigious companies because it mitigated stereotypes of black males as threatening.

• Non-biased subjects can predict winners of political races by viewing candidates’ photos for one-tenth of a second.

• Our brain remembers evidence that supports our initial impressions and distorts evidence that contradicts them. We should give equal weight to information that contradicts our initial hunches.

Contact Wendel Sloan at:

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