Faces
Physiognomy, the art or science of predicting inward character from outward form, is undergoing something of a revival. It has recently been found, for example, that women can predict a man’s interest in infant children from his face. Trustworthiness also shows up, as does social dominance.
Now a study by Justin Carré and Cheryl McCormick (”In your face: facial metrics predict aggressive behaviour in the laboratory and in varsity and professional hockey players“) suggests that it is also possible to look a man’s face and read his predisposition to aggression.
Aggressiveness is predictable from the ratio between the width of a person’s face and its height. This ratio differs systematically between men and women (men have wider faces) and that the difference arises during puberty, when sex hormones are reshaping people’s bodies. The cause seems to be exposure to testosterone, which is also known to make people aggressive.
Carré & McCormick obtained photographs of several university and professional Canadian ice-hockey teams, and measured the facial ratios of the players. They also obtained those players’ penalty records. The wider a player’s face, the more time he spent in penalty box.
Carré and McCormick then recruited several dozen university undergratuates of both sexes and got them to play a game against what they thought was a person in another room but was actually a computer. Various measures of aggression taken during this game suggested the same result as with the hockey players. Aggression was not, however, predictable in women students.
“Facing the truth,” The Economist