Personality traits are visually recognizable from facial and bodily cues
While people frequently make rapid personality judgments based on facial and bodily cues, the scientific literature is sharply divided on whether these visual impressions are genuinely accurate or primarily driven by cognitive stereotypes and physiognomic biases.
The retrieved literature contains a clear tension between studies demonstrating that people consistently form trait impressions from facial and bodily cues (and that these sometimes correlate with real-world behaviors or outcomes) and rigorous empirical work showing that such face-based impressions lack true accuracy and are often overconfident stereotypes.
Simon M. Breil, S. Osterholz, S. Nestler, M. Back. Contributions of Nonverbal Cues to the Accurate Judgment of Personality Traits. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190912529.013.13
Reviews research showing that nonverbal cues, including facial expressions and appearance, contribute to the accurate judgment of personality traits.
Bastian Jaeger, Anthony M Evans, Marielle Stel, Ilja van Beest. Lay beliefs in physiognomy explain overreliance on facial impressions. 2019. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8dq4x
Shows that reliance on facial impressions is often driven by subjective beliefs in physiognomy rather than actual diagnostic accuracy.
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Sutherland CAM, Young AW. Understanding trait impressions from faces.. 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12583
Demonstrates that much of the variance in trait impressions from faces can be predicted from physical cues in facial images.
Lin C, Adolphs R, Alvarez RM. Inferring Whether Officials Are Corruptible From Looking at Their Faces.. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618788882
Finds that facial inferences from photographs correlate with real-world outcomes such as actual political corruption.
Bastian Jaeger, Willem W. A. Sleegers, Julia Stern, Lars Penke, A. Jones. Testing perceivers’ accuracy and accuracy awareness when forming personality impressions from faces. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070231225728
Provides evidence suggesting that face-based personality impressions are generally inaccurate and that people overestimate their accuracy.
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