Others may be unconsciously judging your features in ways you don't realise • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by StavrosK » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 5:51 PM UTC

plonh wrote: post #57

StavrosK wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What underlying qualities does skin color clue us in to What underlying qualities does height clue us in to? Are you sure that, even though traits regularly correlate with other traits, skin color is the one trait that has no correlation with absolutely anything else? I don't find that very likely, personally.

The question is what relevant correlations there are. You won't do well to hire a taller programmer just because taller people are healthier. See also adverse section paradox.

Sure, but there's a widespread way to reliably detect correlations. Besides, my point is more that we shouldn't plug our ears and go "racism lalala" whenever the reasonable, scientific fact that, like everything else, race may be correlated with some traits pops up.

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

#62

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

slipjack wrote: post #51

yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have any studies about humans? Because I'm not aware of many that are clear-cut (of course, there's environment-gene interplay, but that is way more murky than anything talked about in the article or in the OP's comment). I'm not saying that those claims were false and therefore all such claims are false. I'm saying that in the West we've spent a lot of time trying to prove that non-white men are inferior in d…

There are quite a few studies about humans, fruit flies also make an appearance (since you can rapidly breed them). All in all, there is quite a bit of evidence that genetics can influence animal behavior both across and within species.

Based on my reading, I'm quite confident in my belief that genetics explain at least 25% of behavioral differences. I haven't been convinced that it explains 50-90% (as some folks claim). I've appended below a dump of papers which I've either read or are in my queue.

Most results in this space find that white (particularly if you exclude Ashkenazi Jews) people are not the superior race, at least in popular metrics like intelligence, criminality, drug use and divorce. Those westerners trying to "prove that non-white men are inferior" probably should have realized that isn't how evidence works: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence...

http://ussc.edu.au/ussc/assets/media/docs/publications/44_Ha...

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v47/n7/full/ng.3285.html

https://infotomb.com/g99o4.pdf

https://infotomb.com/sy7jn.pdf

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/57897#files-area

https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/38881/HECER...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1758921

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/neu.10160/pdf

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/opinion/45_Hatemi_...

http://unamusementpark.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/boucha...

http://www.matthewckeller.com/16.Hatemi.et.al.2010.Nuc.fam.a...

https://infotomb.com/evkop.pdf

https://infotomb.com/cwnp1.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2923822/#!po=50....

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

#63

Post by m_fayer » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 6:17 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #23

m_fayer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. I'd also add that your face is a reflection of your personality and average emotional temperature. Your "neutral expression" will, over many years of muscle memory and habit, settle into some particular arrangement. People who tend toward bitterness, mistrust, anger, or anxiety - will look it, and inspire vague anxiety in anyone who deals with them. If, on the other hand, your neutral expression broadcast…

> People who tend toward bitterness, mistrust, anger, or anxiety - will look it This is total pseudo-science, like a modern phrenology. Your resting face and how that's interpreted is meaningless. For example, in some cultures no one smiles in photos and smiling at others on the street or in the workplace is a very weird thing to do, but here in the US its extremely common. If an American went to one of those culture…

This is neither science nor pseudo-science, I'm not claiming any degree of rigor. It's nothing more than my own thoughts and observations, and as mentioned downthread, I don't think the research exists to prove or disprove what I'm saying. Perhaps I should have said "IMO" and "I don't have data but..." in my comment, and I do say that a lot. On the other hand, I want to avoid turning this into a kind of tic that I'm seeing increasingly often among technically minded peers, as if we have to apologize for airing any ideas or observations that we've failed to back up with data.

And when I was writing this, what I had in mind was my parents very-much-white Russian cohort, born around WW2, whose faces IMO tend to reflect the anxiety and exhaustion that accompanied most of their lives.

As for the "white" POV, whether or not there is cultural diversity in both the expression of and interpretation of emotions, and especially basic emotions, is currently an intensely researched and AFAIK unsettled question. So when you say that it's "impossible to make broad statements like these", I think the jury is still out.

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

#64

Post by slipjack » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 6:25 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #62

slipjack wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any studies about humans? Because I'm not aware of many that are clear-cut (of course, there's environment-gene interplay, but that is way more murky than anything talked about in the article or in the OP's comment). I'm not saying that those claims were false and therefore all such claims are false. I'm saying that in the West we've spent a lot of time trying to prove that non-white men are inferior in d…

There are quite a few studies about humans, fruit flies also make an appearance (since you can rapidly breed them). All in all, there is quite a bit of evidence that genetics can influence animal behavior both across and within species. Based on my reading, I'm quite confident in my belief that genetics explain at least 25% of behavioral differences. I haven't been convinced that it explains 50-90% (as some folks cla…

Interesting - I'll check these out.

But again, I'm not arguing that genetics don't have any impact on behavior - I'm arguing that getting from someone else's experience of appearance to genetics to the 20% of behavior that's affected is a pretty long jump to make.

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

#65

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 6:40 PM UTC

slipjack wrote: post #64

yummyfajitas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a few studies about humans, fruit flies also make an appearance (since you can rapidly breed them). All in all, there is quite a bit of evidence that genetics can influence animal behavior both across and within species. Based on my reading, I'm quite confident in my belief that genetics explain at least 25% of behavioral differences. I haven't been convinced that it explains 50-90% (as some folks cla…

Interesting - I'll check these out. But again, I'm not arguing that genetics don't have any impact on behavior - I'm arguing that getting from someone else's experience of appearance to genetics to the 20% of behavior that's affected is a pretty long jump to make.

See my link to a college math study (in a separate comment thread); you can improve predictions of math skill significantly above random (50% -> 55%) chance simply based on appearance.

I was totally shocked when I saw this, but there is at least some evidence that appearance predicts more than I would otherwise expect.

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

#66

Post by facepalm » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

In this video Dan Ariely mentions some interesting research about the effects of beauty: http://bigthink.com/videos/dan-ariely-on-advantages-of-physi...

Apparently research has shown that while taller people tend to earn more money, it depends on their height during puberty. People grow at different times, so some people who are tall later in life might not have been so in puberty, while others where already tall in puberty.

The hypothesis is that the effect of tall people earning more might actually be the result of them being more confident, due to already having been tall in their teens. Some effects of beauty might show the same relation.

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

#67

Post by facepalm » Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

dottedmag wrote: post #26

So, how to beat the game then? Say, an instruction how to apply a touch of makeup before going to the business meeting or to the interview.

Makeup is certainly a traditional way to game it - that's essentially the point of makeup. Supposedly in medieval times women even took laudanum to make their pupils wider.