I just read: “Facing a psychopath: Detecting the dark triad from emotionally-neutral faces, using prototypes from the Personality Faceaurus”

I just read: “Facing a psychopath: Detecting the dark triad from emotionally-neutral faces, using prototypes from the Personality Faceaurus” by Nick Holtzman. This was a fascinating study and a pleasure to read. In this study, photographs of 48 women and 33 men were taken. These subjects also did written self assessments using tests for the Dark Triad (Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy). In addition to the self assessment, peers of each subject also gave a written assessment in forms of explicit values for the three traits of the Dark  Triad for each of the subjects. Prototype faces were then created by morphing faces of the 48 women and 33 men.  In total, 12 prototypes were created using all possible value combinations of the following variables: gender(2)*Dark Triad Trait(3)*Low or High(2) = 12. Observers were then instructed to rate each of the 12 faces on an 11 point scale. -5 being high level of confidence in the face on the left, and +5 being high level confidence in the face on the right. The prompt being a description of a dark triad trait. Analysis of the observers rating compared to the combined self and peer assessment of each subject shows that observers were able to predict Dark Triad traits with a degree of success significantly higher than random chance. They were able to do this, by only viewing the face of each subject. This study along with others, indicates that craniofacial structure is diagnostic of many different psychological traits.

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