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Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

bbc.com

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Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#31

Post by gadders »

cafard wrote: post #27
zachb wrote: post #4

The author completely glosses over a crucial fact: an individual's face is representative of the lifestyle that he or she lives. Fat; thin; tan; pale; bearded; bald. Is your hair buzzed military grade, or does it spill over your shoulders? Do you take care of your skin? Do you wax your eyebrows? Our faces certainly tell some sort of story, but there's more to it than bone structure and brow size.

Bald is representative of my life span, but of my lifestyle only to the extent that it has helped me to live to be old enough to lose the hair.

If you had a combover I would judge you hard.

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#32

Post by slipjack »

blfr wrote: post #21

Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge. And, of course, prior information should change the way you view new information. I don't see how it can do more harm than good if you can do better than chance. Neither would I be so confident that I can do better than millions of years of evolution, especially by reading resumes. We can guess wh…

> Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge.

I'd be pretty careful about this line of argument. What we think of as a clue to underlying qualities is cultural... for example, one of the biggest superficial differences in people is the color of their skin. What underlying qualities does skin color clue us in to?

In the US and Europe, we have a long history of trying to find the ties between visible and non-visible qualities. Phrenology, eugenics, Blacks as having "inferior intelligence", the belief that women are prone to hysteria - all were attempts to find that link.

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#33

Post by yummyfajitas »

blfr wrote: post #21

Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge. And, of course, prior information should change the way you view new information. I don't see how it can do more harm than good if you can do better than chance. Neither would I be so confident that I can do better than millions of years of evolution, especially by reading resumes. We can guess wh…

It's been shown in at least one experiment that superficial appearances are correlated with underlying qualities. Specifically, simply by looking at two people one can choose the one better at math 55% of the time!

https://mega.co.nz/#!6UxzVLIA!BVUOujU76VnhZM45QE4N2oFz0yLRTf...

The title and abstract of the study (discussing gender stereotypes) more or less ignores the truly interesting bits of this study. Gender stereotypes reduce profits by 0.1% but discrimination by appearance increases profits by 11.4%!

Obviously actual math tests are better than appearance.

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#34

Post by mhurron »

cafard wrote: post #27
zachb wrote: post #4

The author completely glosses over a crucial fact: an individual's face is representative of the lifestyle that he or she lives. Fat; thin; tan; pale; bearded; bald. Is your hair buzzed military grade, or does it spill over your shoulders? Do you take care of your skin? Do you wax your eyebrows? Our faces certainly tell some sort of story, but there's more to it than bone structure and brow size.

Bald is representative of my life span, but of my lifestyle only to the extent that it has helped me to live to be old enough to lose the hair.

> Bald is representative of my life span

No it's not, unless your saying that outside of any specific disease or condition you lived to puberty. Many people start balding in their late teens, others never do.

That you balded is representative that there is probably someone in your ancestry that was bald. That's pretty much it.

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#35

Post by nitrogen »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #24
blfr wrote: post #21

Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge. And, of course, prior information should change the way you view new information. I don't see how it can do more harm than good if you can do better than chance. Neither would I be so confident that I can do better than millions of years of evolution, especially by reading resumes. We can guess wh…

"This gene causes this $complex_behavior" is practically modern phrenology. These types of studies are questionable and controversial. Not to mention unethical behaviors are often cultural constructs that in one culture is fine (being gay in the US) and another considered unethical (being gay in Russia.) Not too long ago many scientists, including HN's beloved Nikola Tesla, were loudly advocating for further and deep…

I think you're taking down a strawman amalgam of misconceptions that few people, if any, actually believe all at once.

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#36

Post by mhurron »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #25
zachb wrote: post #4

The author completely glosses over a crucial fact: an individual's face is representative of the lifestyle that he or she lives. Fat; thin; tan; pale; bearded; bald. Is your hair buzzed military grade, or does it spill over your shoulders? Do you take care of your skin? Do you wax your eyebrows? Our faces certainly tell some sort of story, but there's more to it than bone structure and brow size.

>face is representative of the lifestyle that he or she lives. Fat; thin; tan; pale; bearded; bald. That completely ignores congenital conditions, skin diseases, losing the genetic lottery, etc. There are a lot of people who lead truly shitty lives and who look great and vice-versa. I think we're buying way too much into genetic determinism here and this all sounds like shades of eugenics. Its incredible that even ge…

> Its incredible that even geeks

It's almost like no matter what you label yourself as you're still human, as if these labels are really meaningless.

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#37

Post by yummyfajitas »

slipjack wrote: post #32
blfr wrote: post #21

Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge. And, of course, prior information should change the way you view new information. I don't see how it can do more harm than good if you can do better than chance. Neither would I be so confident that I can do better than millions of years of evolution, especially by reading resumes. We can guess wh…

> Being swayed by superficial cues is not irrational if they correlate to the underlying qualities you are trying to judge. I'd be pretty careful about this line of argument. What we think of as a clue to underlying qualities is cultural... for example, one of the biggest superficial differences in people is the color of their skin. What underlying qualities does skin color clue us in to? In the US and Europe, we hav…

The history of seeking correlations between visible and invisible qualities has been largely successful. For instance, it's fairly well known that border collies can be successfully trained to herd sheep, but wolves cannot.

Experiments have provided significant evidence that these behavioral traits are genetic: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/dogs-b...

Further, in the US and Europe, we also have a long history of trying to find substances which kill infections. These failed until we found penicillin. Citing a few false claims (not all the ones you've cited are even known to be false) and using this as evidence that all such claims must be false is a logical fallacy.

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#38

Post by lallysingh »

jcfrei wrote: post #3
pcthrowaway wrote: post #2

This was submitted with the title of the article and then changed to this ("Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise") in the time it took me to read it. Isn't the policy here that article submissions should be submitted with the title of the article?

I agree, this seems like mod intervention solely aimed at discrediting the article (ie. making it appear shallow and unscientific). I'm not saying this is a great article but the edit is unnecessary.

Odd, when I read "features" I assumed software features. I expected an article on user perceptions of software by feature-set.

I guess I'm saying that there's a lot of open space for interpretation?

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#39

Post by lsniddy »

People ask me for directions all the time, and I've always been convinced this was the reason. I also think body size and appearance plays a part

Wouldn't it be neat if you offered a service that would rate you on some important dimensions so you new your relative score?

Re: Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise

#40

Post by charlieflowers »

If you accept that our brains automatically make these judgements and therefore we're unlikely to be able to train ourselves out of it, then the most interesting question is:

"How do you hack this?"

What can an individual do to maximize good judgements? How can you influence the amount of competence or dominance or trustworthiness others automatically attribute to your face?

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