First impressions last, so the cliché goes, and a recent study conducted by researchers at the Department of Psychology in University of York shows what these first impressions could be based on one’s facial features.
The researchers say that it’s possible to provide an accurate first impression of a person through measuring physical features of faces in photos, although it’s unclear how accurate these could be. Regardless, they say these initial impressions we have of people can influence our succeeding behavior.
For instance, one’s judgment of competence based on facial images alone can interestingly foretell results in election.
The various judgments can be categorized to three distinctive dimensions, according to researches before. The dimensions are approachability, dominance and youthful-attractiveness.
Approachability answers the question of “do they want to help or harm me?” dominance answers “can they help or harm me?" and youthful-attractiveness represents either the image of a good romantic partner or a rival.
The researchers examined the basis for such judgments by taking 1,000 ordinary photos from the Internet and analyzing the facial features to create a model for accurately predicting first impressions. They described each face using 65 varied features as gauge such as “eyebrow width” and “eye height” among others.
Combining such measures would help the model explain over half of the variation in the social judgments of same faces. Reversal of the process also makes it possible to develop new cartoon-like faces that create expected first impressions in a new set of judges. The images also demonstrate the facial features related to specific social judgments.
“Showing how these first impressions can be captured from very variable images of faces offers insight into how our brains achieve this seemingly remarkable perceptual feat,” Andy Young, lead researcher and Department of Psychology professor at York, says in a statement.
Meanwhile, Dr. Tom Hartley, another leader of the study, admits not having conscious awareness of how people’s faces—whether in person or online—influence the way he interacts with them.
“Whether in 'real life' or online; it feels as if a person’s character is something I can just sense. These results show how heavily these impressions are influenced by visual features of the face - it’s quite an eye opener!” Hartley says.
PhD student Richard Vernon, who was among the researchers, has a word of caution when posting those selfies or avatars in social media.
“Showing that even supposedly arbitrary features in a face can influence people's perceptions suggests that careful choice of a photo could make (or break) others’ first impressions of you,” says Vernon.
The study, “Modeling first impressions from highly variable facial images,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal.
