Author: colby

The paper read as if one group of researches conducted the study, and from that data delivered a lot of pure algebra to another set of researchers. The 2nd group of researchers then had to infer what the algebra said about the study. It was very hard to read. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516255/ This paper was NOT about the accuracy of inference of traits, but rather how people inferred traits from looking at emotionally neutral faces. No part of the study examined the accuracy of these judgements. After numerous studies the researchers came to the conclusion that judgement of a face uses an overgeneralization of the same mechanisms used to read emotion on faces. Essentially, some people look angry even when showing an emotionally neutral face, so the participants in the study would describe them as being more dominant, or more angry.

In my attempt to gather more knowledge on what research has already been done in regards to linking visible physiology to psychology and general behavior I am reading papers on the subject. I will each time attempt to write a very short synopsis/opinion piece on the paper just to make sure I didn’t complete glaze over what I just read. This is the first of such pieces.

https://carrelab.nipissingu.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2014/10/Carre-et-al-2010Perception.pdf

In this study the researchers used faces of men who’s aggression had already been determined in a previous study (Carre and McCormick 2008a). The aggression of these 37 men was determined by having them play a game in which the goal was to score points. The more points you scored the more money you were supposed to get. It was a very simple game in which you play against an opponent. The salient feature of this game used to gauge aggression was a button you could press to take away points from your opponent. These points were not given to you, and your reward at the end of the game had nothing to do with your opponents points. So taking the time to ‘punish’ your opponent served no other purpose than to do just that. You would in fact probably score less points and make less money if you spent time punishing your opponent. So I DO think this game was a very good way to determine aggression in people. Of course aggression isn’t that simple and there are other factors a person can possess that would override their aggression, but I can’t think of a better way to determine aggression given such a simple experiment. I think it is quite a suitable method. I don’t know why they used only men. I would have preferred a mix of women, but I don’t believe results would be significantly different.

So we’ve got 37 men who’s aggression has already been determined. Next what happens is the researchers of this paper (Estimating aggression from emotionally neutral faces: Which facial cues are diagnostic?) have a bunch of students review the faces of these men, and then rate each face on a scale of 1-7. 1 Being not at all aggressive. 7 Being very aggressive. The students were told how the aggression of these men was determined. In addition to just rating how aggressive they perceived each face to be, the faces were in separate experiments cropped horizontally, and vertically, blurred, and scrambled. This was done to determine which qualities of the faces were most diagnostic/salient in determining aggression. The found that facial width to height ratio was the salient factor in determining aggression in a person’s face.

Furthermore the students who were rating the faces on a scale of 1-7 for aggression were highly accurate. Like super accurate. This whole paper is riddled with ridiculously low P values. It’s amazing actually. So the paper stresses a lot about the fact that it’s facial width to height ratio that determines aggression and that most people use in assessing aggression of other people. But the amazing thing to me is that we literally have scientific evidence that static facial features can be used to infer someone’s aggression and that people are capable of doing so without any previous training.

Although they determined facial width to height ratio the determining factor of aggression I don’t think their experiment was sufficiently detailed to be unequivocally sure that facial width to height ratio is the best factor to use for determining aggression. My hypothesis is that the BEST feature to use is pronation or supination of the eyebrows.

This paper was fairly readable, very interesting, and also made clear to me it is not the only paper that has explored the correlation between static facial features and behavior.