A new twist on first impressions. A study carried out by researchers at the University of Toronto (Canada) has concluded that anyone can tell with certainty if someone is rich or poor than the average simply by looking at their face. With one caveat: the ability to read a person’s social and economic status only applies to neutral faces – without any specific expression – not when we smile or express an emotion.
According to the study, collected in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people tend to use these impressions in a biased way, such as, for example, thinking that a person with a face that suggests more wealth is more likely to be hired for work than another that evokes poverty.
“Those first impressions can become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that will influence the interactions and opportunities that person is going to have,” explains Thora Bjornsdottir, co-author of the work.
Another of the conclusions of the study was that the ability to guess the social class of the participants was applied exclusively to neutral faces , which is why they expose that emotions mask the expression habits that have been recorded throughout our lives in the face, such as a person who continually smiles and appears happy, which, according to stereotypes, is associated with being rich and being satisfied with life.
” Over time, your face comes to reflect and permanently reveal your experiences. Even when we think we are not expressing something, the relics of those emotions are still there,” clarifies Nicholas Rule, also a co-author of the study.
The details of the experiment
The experts previously selected a group of students according to their income and photographed them with different expressions. Then, they asked another group of students to use their instincts to find out which were “rich or poor” simply by looking at their faces. Participants were able to determine which student belonged to the rich or poor group with 53% accuracy, a level that exceeds chance. In addition, the results were not affected by race, gender of the face or the time they spent looking at the photographs.
“There are neurons in the brain that specialize in facial recognition. The face is the first thing we see when we look at someone. We see faces in the clouds, we see faces in toast, we are somewhat forced to look for stimuli similar to a face, and this it’s somewhat consistent, which makes it statistically significant, “Rule clarifies.
Reference: R. Thora Bjornsdottir et al, The Visibility of Social Class From Facial Cues., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2017). DOI: 10.1037 / pspa0000091
