Left to right: George H. W. Bush, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter. Aggressive people are easy to spot because they have instantly recognizable wide faces, researchers claim.Aggressive people are easy to spot because they have instantly recognizable wide faces, researchers claim.
Just a quick glance at someone's facial structure may be enough to predict their tendency towards aggression, according to a study published in the Psychological Science journal found
Facial width-to-height ratio (WHR) is determined by measuring the distance between the right and left cheeks and the distance from the upper lip to the mid-brow.
Psychologists from Brock University in the USA decided to follow up on previous research that suggested males with a large facial WHR act more aggressively than those with narrower features .
In the study, volunteers viewed photos of faces of men who had previously had their aggressive behaviour analysed.
The participants then rated how aggressive they thought each person was on a scale of one to seven, after viewing each face for either 2000 milliseconds or 39 milliseconds.
The results revealed the participants' estimates of aggression correlated highly with the actual aggressive behaviour of the men - even if they only saw the picture for a split second.
And the volunteers' estimates also matched with the WHR of the faces the wider the face, the higher the aggressive rating.
The psychologists concluded that subtle differences in face shape may affect personality judgements, which in turn, guide how people respond to others.
During childhood, boys and girls have similar facial structures, but during puberty, males develop wider features than females.
Previous research has suggested that males with wider faces act more aggressively - with studies showing that hockey players with broad features earn more penalty minutes per game than other players .
研究人員日前稱,具有攻擊性的人很容易被認(rèn)出,因?yàn)樗麄冮L著"一眼即可看出"的寬臉盤。
一項(xiàng)發(fā)表于《心理科學(xué)》期刊的研究發(fā)現(xiàn),(當(dāng)某人站在你面前時),只需迅速看一眼他的面部結(jié)構(gòu),可能就足以判斷他的攻擊性。
臉部的寬高比(WHR)是通過測量左右臉頰之間的距離和上嘴唇到眉中的距離得出的。
此前有研究表明,臉部寬高比值較大的男性比臉窄的男性更具侵略性。美國布魯克大學(xué)的心理學(xué)家決定對此開展進(jìn)一步研究。
研究人員讓志愿者們?yōu)g覽了不同男性的臉部照片。之前研究人員已對這些男性的攻擊性行為進(jìn)行了分析。
之后,志愿者們根據(jù)自己的感覺,對每個男性的進(jìn)攻性按一分至七分進(jìn)行評級。他們?yōu)g覽每張照片的時間長則兩秒,短則0.039秒。
研究結(jié)果表明,志愿者們對這些男性進(jìn)攻性的估計(jì)與實(shí)際情況的相符度很高--即使他們只看了一眼照片。
而志愿者對男性進(jìn)攻性的估計(jì)與臉部的寬高比也相符。臉部越寬,進(jìn)攻性評級越高。
心理學(xué)家總結(jié)稱,臉型的細(xì)微差別可能會影響個性判斷,從而引導(dǎo)人們?nèi)绾螒?yīng)付他人。
在兒童時期,男孩和女孩的臉部結(jié)構(gòu)相似。但到了青春期,男性的臉部開始變得更寬。
此前研究表明,面部較寬的男性進(jìn)攻性更強(qiáng)。有調(diào)查稱,在曲棍球比賽中,臉部較寬的選手每場比賽被罰下的時間長于其他選手。