What do faces tell you

Tolerance: Indicated by the horizontal distance between eyes. Stevens says people with wider-set eyes tend to be more tolerant of errors. Sense of humour : Indicated by the length of the philtrum. Stevens links a longer philtrum, which is the vertical groove between the nose and upper lip to a dry sense of humour and sarcasm, whereas people with shorter philtrums may take jokes personally. Generosity : Indicated by the shape and size of lips. Stevens says people with fuller upper lips tend to be more generous with their speech, while people with thinner lips tend to be more concise.

Stevens says people with a thicker fold tend to be more analytical, whereas those with thin, or no folds, tend to be more decisive and action-driven. Magnetism : Indicated by the depth of colour of eyes. Stevens says people with deeper-coloured eyes tend to be more charismatic. Solso The Important Function of Faces Our faces, which we take so much for granted as we shave or apply makeup each morning, are a powerful and privileged component of our nature, with an important role in evolution, social life, and art.

References Darwin, C. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York. Ekman Ed. Academic Press, Ekman, P. Dalgleish and M. Power Eds. Handbook of cognition and emotion. Sacks, O. Summit Books, Solso, RL. Cerebrum Cerebrum Fall Issue. Cerebrum The Pressure to Perform Are those who perform before the public—hundreds, thousands, even millions of spectators at a time—at heightened risk of mental illness?

Cerebrum Migraine: The Road to New Targeted Drugs The Brain Prize went to four individuals whose independent research led to useful treatments for a disorder affecting a billion people. Cerebrum Magic of the Mind. Cerebrum A Conversation Worth Having A psychiatrist falls seriously ill, and considers anew the dogma not to share details of one's life with one's patients.

Cerebrum False Hope and Deep Pockets. Cerebrum Cerebrum Summer Issue Table of contents, with links, for this issue of Cerebrum's emagazine. Cerebrum Interoception: The Secret Ingredient. Explore More Sign up for monthly email updates on neuroscience discoveries, Cerebrum magazine, and upcoming events.

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You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. Even babies seem to be born understanding the importance of faces, because as early as 9 minutes after birth, babies prefer to look at faces rather than any other objects [ 1 ].

By the time they are 12 days old, babies can already imitate the facial gestures of adults [ 2 ]. This ability is very important for their development because it helps them to later learn how to speak and to think. Imagine, for example, that on one sunny day, you and your friend are standing in a field and talking about your favorite game. You are laughing and chatting and enjoying your conversation. Now your friend has you really concerned.

And you should be! A huge, hungry bear running toward you! Scientists have discovered that large parts of the brain are responsible for understanding what we see. Within the visual system, there is a special part that plays an important role in interpreting information revealed by faces, such as who someone is and how she feels.

This area is called the fusiform face area, which is part of the fusiform gyrus for short FFG, see Figure 1B. Using special equipment to take images that measure the amount of oxygen in the brain, called a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, scientists have shown that when people look at pictures of faces, the fusiform area of the brain shows more activity, compared with when the same people look at pictures of nature or houses [ 3 ].

To understand emotions, the visual system works together with other parts of the brain. One of these parts is called the amygdala. It is located in the lower part of the brain Figure 1B. When different areas of the brain frequently talk to each other, these areas form a network.

The FFG and amygdala are part of the face perception network of the brain [ 4 ]. Sometimes, they can even have trouble recognizing their own faces when they look in the mirror. This is a condition that is called prosopagnosia, which is also known as face blindness. Human beings around the world have similar brain structure and use similar facial muscles to express basic emotions such as happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, anger, and disgust.

The answer, according to scientists who study emotions, is both yes and no. While many experiments have shown that people around the world can accurately recognize basic emotions, such as happiness, sadness, anger, and fear, other research has shown that there are differences in the way people read facial expressions depending on where they are from.

This makes sense when we consider that people in different cultures do not all behave and think the same way. One of these cultural differences is found in display rules. Display rules are rules that we learn as children that tell us how and when to express our emotions. Scientists have been studying display rules for many years and in many different cultures, in order to understand how they influence the way people around the world express and read emotions.

In essence, people would be growing into the character expected of their physiognomy. This effect sometimes works the other way round, however, especially for those who look cute. The Nobel prize-winning ethologist Konrad Lorenz once suggested that baby-faced features evoke a nurturing response. Support for this has come from work by Zebrowitz, who has found that baby-faced boys and men stimulate an emotional centre of the brain, the amygdala, in a similar way.

Baby-faced men are, on average, better educated, more assertive and apt to win more military medals than their mature-looking counterparts. They are also more likely to be criminals; think Al Capone. Similarly, Zebrowitz found baby-faced boys to be quarrelsome and hostile, and more likely to be academic high-fliers. There is another theory that recalls the old parental warning not to pull faces, because they might freeze that way. According to this theory, our personality moulds the way our faces look.

It is supported by a study two decades ago which found that angry old people tend to look cross even when asked to strike a neutral expression.

A lifetime of scowling, grumpiness and grimaces seemed to have left its mark. This takes us back to Darwin himself. Our experiment examined whether some subtle aspects of our psychological make-up might be related to facial appearance, while offering readers the chance to appear on the cover of this issue in a composite image. We asked readers to submit a photograph of themselves looking directly at the camera, and to complete a simple online personality questionnaire.

In this they rated how lucky, humorous, religious and trustworthy they considered themselves to be. More than people were kind enough to submit their photographs and ratings. From these personality self-assessments we identified groups of men and women scoring at the extremes of each of the four dimensions.

The face-blending technique we used was pioneered more than a century ago by the Victorian polymath Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin. The principle behind it is simple. Imagine having photographs of two people who look very different.

To create a composite we manipulate digitised versions of the images to align key facial landmarks such as the corners of the mouth and eyes. This allows us to calculate an average of the two faces.

For example, if both faces have bushy eyebrows and deep-set eyes, the resulting composite would also have these features.