study
What people assume about you based on your facial features
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Which social class people assign to us can have a strong influence on how our lives develop. A new study suggests that our facial features also contribute to how others see and classify us.
People assume things about others based on a variety of things. This includes the language(s) these people speak, what they wear, where they live, whether they are married or not, whether they have children, what job they do, and so on. All of this can fuel prejudices about how intelligent someone is, how much money the person has at their disposal and what character traits they have. But it starts much earlier: According to a recent study from Scotland, people appear to classify others into a social class based on their facial features.
Study: Which facial features do we associate with which characteristics?
A research team from the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Glasgow in Scotland used a complex facial feature recognition method to investigate which features cause certain prejudices. The researchers primarily investigated the question of what causes people to classify others into a higher or lower social class, or to assess them as more wealthy or more poor.
It was also about understanding how such facial features are related to attributes such as competence, warmth, dominance and trustworthiness. Because all of these characteristics are often perceived as being linked to social class. The participants in the study were all white and came from Western cultures.
Are there “poor” and “rich” faces?
The result shows that there are apparently special constellations of facial features that most people often associate with a certain social class. Faces that were primarily perceived as “poor” were usually wider, shorter and flatter with the corners of the mouth pointing downwards. In addition, the skin tone of these people was usually darker and rather cool. The participants in the study also perceived people with these characteristics as incompetent, cold and untrustworthy.
In contrast, narrower, longer faces with more upturned mouth corners and lighter, warmer skin tones were perceived as wealthier and of a higher social class. They were also seen as more competent, warm and trustworthy.
Dr. R. Thora Bjornsdottir is co-author of the study and explains: “People who are perceived as belonging to a high or low social class are often also assigned positive or negative characteristics.” Such judgments are often made based solely on facial features, and this can have negative consequences for people, especially in the form of disadvantages for those who are perceived as poorer.
The most important goal according to the study: reducing prejudices
“This shows that our prejudices are crucial to how we perceive others,” adds the scientist. “Our impressions of others can have clear advantages or disadvantages for them.”
The research team now wants to use these results to reduce prejudices and thus give more people a fair chance – regardless of what a person looks like. And perhaps it will help if we remind ourselves how prejudiced our perception often is. In this way we can go through the world more mindfully and perhaps manage to meet others more openly and not prejudge them based on external characteristics.
Source used: gla.ac.uk