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Facial Features Predict IQ In Men: Long Face And Wide-Set Eyes Make Men Look Smart

4K views 21 replies 17 participants last post by  IDontThinkSo 
#1 ·
Facial Features Predict IQ In Men: Long Face And Wide-Set Eyes Make Men Look Smart, But Not Women
Facial Features Predict IQ In Men: Long Face And Wide-Set Eyes Make Men Look Smart, But Not Women
Apr 1, 2014 02:14 PM By Lizette Borreli

Man wearing glasses with hand under chin
A man’s IQ may be predicted just by looking at his facial features, especially if he has a long face and wide-set eyes, but why doesn't this hold true for women? Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Most of us will admit we’ve judged a book by its cover, and also people, based on their physical appearance. We also tend to perceive people who wear glasses as more intelligent when compared to those who don’t, but Czech researchers now suggest we can predict a man’s IQ based on how he looks. The study published in the journal PLoS One found men, but not women, with a long face and wide-set eyes are perceived as more intelligent.

“The ability to accurately assess the intelligence of other persons finds its place in everyday social interaction and should have important evolutionary consequences,” wrote the researchers in their report. Faces, the researchers say, help inform us about someone’s personality, sex, age, health, ethnicity, social rank, attractiveness, political affiliation, and to some extent their level of intelligence. While several researchers have suggested that people tend to associate higher IQs with a higher level of attractiveness, this research team sought to describe the specific facial traits that play a role in intelligence assessment, as well as those that correlate with actual intelligence.


To investigate which particular factors of general intelligence can accurately be assessed from facial photographs, 160 participants (75 men and 85 women) were asked to rate the photographs of 80 Czech university students (40 men and 40 women). Each student in the picture completed a Czech version of the Intelligence Structure Test that uses various types of tools to measure the different types of intelligence. The images were close-ups of the students’ faces, which featured a neutral, non-smiling expression, and did not wear jewelry or cosmetics, Business Insider reported.

The raters took their time rating each photograph for either intelligence or attractiveness. Of the raters, 43 women and 42 men judged photos for intelligence, and 42 women and 33 men judged them for attractiveness using a scale of 1 to 7 (1 being the highest score, 7 being the lowest possible score). The researchers then averaged the intelligence and attractiveness scores each student received.

The findings revealed both men and women were able to accurately evaluate the intelligence of men by just viewing the facial photographs. Men in the photos with a higher IQ were perceived as more intelligent much more than women in the photos who also had higher IQ scores. In both sexes, a narrower face with a thinner chin, and a larger, prolonged nose characterized the predicted stereotype of a higher IQ, while a rather oval and broader face with a massive chin and a smallish nose led to a prediction of low-intelligence.


Men's facial features predict IQ

A narrower face with a thinner chin, and a larger prolonged nose characterizes the predicted stereotype of a higher IQ in men and women. Photo courtesy of PLoS One. PLoS One

Women's facial features did not predict IQ

An oval and broader face with a massive chin and a smallish nose lead to a prediction of low-intelligence for both men and women. Photo courtesy of PLoS One. PLoS One

The researchers found there were two factors of general intelligence that were significantly associated with perceived intelligence from men’s faces — fluid intelligence and figural intelligence. “Fluid intelligence is the capacity to logically solve problems independent of acquired knowledge,” wrote the authors. “Figurative intelligence describes the ability to handle objects such as images, patterns and shapes.”


While the study found this finding to hold true for men, why were these cues of higher intelligence not visible in women’s faces? The researchers speculate this is “due to some genetic and developmental association to sex steroid hormonal agents during puberty,” but it could also be attributed to how women are frequently judged based on their attractiveness rather than IQ.

The discrepancy between men and women’s perceived IQ can also lend to the halo effect. Psychology Today says the halo effect can refer to people’s tendency to rate attractive individuals as more likable for their personality traits or characteristics compared to those who are less attractive. The researchers believe in this study, “the strong halo effect of attractiveness may thus prevent an accurate assessment of the intelligence of women.”

Meanwhile, it seems like we can judge a man’s intelligence by sight.
 
#2 ·
The male face on the left triggest my genocidal instincts.
 
#4 ·
it's interesting to compare this result to what we believe about the intelligence of dogs...the smartest dogs--eg, border collies, poodles, german sheperds, etc--tend to have narrow faces and pointy snouts...the dumbest dogs, otoh--bulldogs, bloodhounds, mastiffs, etc--tend to have broad faces and blunt snouts
 
#12 ·
I'm sorry but that guy on the left looks like a typical high school jock who watches too much porn and goes "haah?" whenever the teacher calls on him :laughing:
 
#14 ·
blogs.discovermagazine.com

Debunking Phrenology with 21st Century Methods


[HR][/HR] Modern neuroscience has been accused of being a ‘new phrenology‘ but now neuroscientists have conducted a modern evaluation of phrenological claims using neuroscience methods.

In an enjoyable new preprint called An empirical, 21st century evaluation of phrenology, Oxford researchers Oiwi Parker Jones and colleagues say that they’ve rigorously tested, and debunked, phrenology for the first time.

Notoriously, the phrenologists believed that the shape of an individual’s skull provided clues about their character. The theory was that the brain contained different ‘organs’ which determined different traits. Larger organs exerted a more dominant influence on personality, and organ size could be inferred from head shape because larger organs would push out the skull (early in life) forming “bumps” on the scalp.

Phrenology was wildly popular for much of the 19th century, but later went out of fashion. In recent decades the idea has been nothing more than a historical curiosity. Parker Jones et al. decided that the time has come to seriously test the theory:

We believe it is important for scientists to test ideas, even unfashionable or offensive ones, and not to be content dismissing them out of hand.


So the authors took MRI scans on 5,724 people from the UK Biobank dataset. The scans were processed to calculate the curvature of the scalp at each point – conventionally, neuroscientists use similar algorithms to study the shape of the brain. Here’s what it looked like:



To see if scalp bumps predicted behaviour, the researchers correlated them against the lifestyle and cognitive variables in the Biobank dataset. But to spice things up a bit, and ensure an authentic phrenological feel, Parker Jones et al. first mapped the Biobank variables against the 27 mental “faculties” proposed by Franz Joseph Gall, founder of phrenology.

So, for instance, Gall’s Faculty I was “Impulse to propagation (Amativeness)”, which was, not unreasonably, assigned to the “lifetime sexual partners” variable. Some of the other Faculties, however, were less easy to find proxies for… but Parker Jones et al. did their best:

The researchers comment laconically that “All associations were made in a spirit of mirth.” (I wonder if this was a light-hearted Christmas paper that arrived a few days late?)

So what did the researchers find? Absolutely nothing. There were no associations between any ‘faculty’ and scalp curvature. Scalp shape also had no relation to underlying brain shape (gyrification), contrary to phrenological assumptions. Here’s the entirety of Parker Jones et al.’s results section:

Results: We found no statistically significant or meaningful effects for either phrenological analysis.


The authors comment that:

The present study sought to test in the most exhaustive way currently possible the fundamental claim of phrenology: that measuring the contour of the head provides a reliable method for inferring mental capacities. We found no evidence for this claim.


Regarding the famous ‘phrenological busts’ which depict the locations of the various faculties,

According to our results, a more accurate phrenological bust should be left blank since no regions on the head correlate with any of the faculties that we tested.



I’m actually rather surprised that there were no significant effects in the “faculty”-scalp analysis. I would have expected there to be racial/ethnic differences in some of the measures, and skull shape does show racial/ethnic variation. (Of course this doesn’t mean that skull shape is somehow the cause of behavioural differences.) The authors controlled for age and sex in their analyses, but they don’t mention controlling for other demographics, like race.
 
#17 ·
A reason I get many complements for my thinking is down to me looking "less intelligent". Interesting thought. I got a short/small face and narrow eyes.
 
#18 ·
Personally looking at those pictures I'd say the middle ones register as more intelligent and sharp/with-it. To me the the right hand ones (which they say should look most intelligent) register as more gentle and daydreamy and lead by the heart rather than the head. The ones on the right look to me more like practical here-and-now type people who may be a bit more 'set in their ways' or loyal to traditions and common sense. so... I don't know....
 
#21 ·
Interesting...when I think intelligent men an image of Noam Chomsky or Tesla would appear and they do have long face and wide set eyes ...funny

How would one describe Donald Trump face


Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
#22 ·
Those in the right row don't have wide set eyes (hypertelorism). In all pictures the eyes are equally set in relation to their own eyeball sizes, or rather, how much of it is protruding. It's the normal spacing, the distance between pupils is 2/3 the distance between the outer corners. What's noticeable is that the left man and woman have sunken features, more testosterone, and probably a stronger tongue. Their facial features sink toward the nasal bridge. They have deep set eyes. Might indicate that the frontal lobe is less bulging behind. So yes, bad news. They display the development of an organism which doesn't let much room for its mind to develop and it's probably true. But true orbital hypertelorism is also often a bad sign imho. I my personal experience most hyperteloric people are batshit crazy : if their hyperteloric eyes are sunken, they're serial killer material, if they're bulging, they're mystical freaks.
 
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