[zachb]

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.

[m_fayer]

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 broadcasts poise, optimism, peace, wit, or good humor - the subtle good will that this generates will eventually add up to a significantly better experience of humanity. In this way, the way we look can be self-reinforcing.

In a way, we all get the face we deserve.

[pavel_lishin]

Aside from tending towards certain emotions, I'd wager that urban vs. rural residents probably have different default facial expressions.

I've heard people refer to "Moscow face" (though oddly, not "New York face"), where people's expressions are blandly neutral, tending towards negative - it's a way of adjusting to living in a large urban center.

I'm not sure what my default face while I'm out in public is, but I've definitely got a certain expression I've learned to put on when I'm walking by people trying to sell me something, beg me for something, recruit me for something. I've had people start walking towards me, and then instantly back away when I slip that particular mask on.

It's pretty great, but I'd wager that it's an adaptation that someone living in Farmersville, TX doesn't need to use very often.

[noir_lord]

> I've heard people refer to "Moscow face" (though oddly, not "New York face"), where people's expressions are blandly neutral, tending towards negative - it's a way of adjusting to living in a large urban center.

There is a cultural aspect here though as well, many Russians only smile amongst people they know, they think that people who smile at strangers are either simple or up to something, I once asked a Russian about this and he said that you pretty much never smile except with friends and it's a different kind of smile, he also said it was one of the things he liked about England in that we are fairly close to Russians in that regard.

http://www.russianlife.com/blog/why-dont-russians-smile/

[pavel_lishin]

I grew up there until I was ten. My mom used to joke that if a stranger is smiling at you in the street, they've already got your wallet.

[noir_lord]

haha.

Yeah the Russian I knew told me a story about if you where walking past a queue you joined it, didn't matter if you knew what was at the other end whatever it was could be bartered.

They where incredibly innovative in how they dealt with the lack of resources, bit like Cuba and keeping 60 year old cars on the road I guess, needs must when the devil drives.

[pavel_lishin]

I was trying to remember an old joke about waiting in line, and obviously went to Wikipedia.

Amusingly, both the Russian Jokes page and the Russian Political Jokes page appear to have no Russian translations...

[drzaiusapelord]

> 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 cultures, he'd think everyone was an angry murderer.

Not to mention, many cheery and upbeat men and women having what's comically called "resting bitch face." They just don't look particularly cheery when not making an expression, usually people with "ethnic" features like deeply set eyes, chubbier jowls, wider faces, darker eyes, natural 'bags' under eyes, etc that compared to an Anglo person makes them look angry or annoyed. As someone with this ethnicity (Mediterranean descent) its something I have to constantly work on as to not intimidate others.

I think your take on things is a very "white" and Western view. Different cultures and ethnicity have different facial standards and its impossible to make broad statements like these.

[m_fayer]

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.

[jdbernard]

> This is total pseudo-science, like a modern phrenology.

How do we know? I haven't heard of any studies that compare people's first impressions against the person's actual disposition or personality.

For example, this article pointed out that honesty was a trait people tend to read from faces, but it didn't ask the question: are people's reading accurate? It assumes that an honest-looking face has no bearing on a person's actual integrity, but maybe it does. We haven't actually measured.

To be clear: I'm not trying to agree or disagree with you, just point out that we don't have any strong evidence either way. As far as I know both positions are unsupported scientifically.

[plonh]

When making up theories, the burden of proof is on you.

[drzaiusapelord]

>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 geeks buy into "Prettier people are better people" silliness.

[mhurron]

> 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.

[itg]

The entire article is about how bone structure can make a difference about how others perceive us, even if everything else is the same. The first sentence of the article gives a hypothetical of non-identical twins with the same exact lifestyle.

[gwern]

> a hypothetical of non-identical twins with the same exact lifestyle.

Which is a ridiculous hypothetical on the face of it. Non-identical twins, fraternal twins, are hardly more similar than siblings are. And siblings can differ quite a bit. Even if they somehow wound up the same on a few measured characteristics, they will still be rather different on many other characteristics and the hypothetical shows nothing.

[justinhj]

I think that was an important and deliberate part of the research. The images in the article were specifically created to show the subtle facial features they were interested in.

Sure if someone has a fat face and unkempt facial hair or a swastika tattoo on their forehead then you will make conscious and unconscious judgements about them. But the study seems to show clear bias without such prominent clues.

[Alex3917]

Also, even your facial structure most likely changes throughout your life depending on the last couple years of your levels of dominance, trustworthiness, competence, etc. Just look at Dick Cheney.

[plonh]

What??

[cafard]

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.

[mhurron]

> 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.

[gadders]

If you had a combover I would judge you hard.