Facing up: What your cheekbones say about you

A study shows that the brain makes a snap judgment whether to trust a face “in a matter of milliseconds.”

15:20 07 August 2014

A study conducted by a team of psychologists at New York University has revealed that our brains are wired to make a snap judgment whether to trust a face “in a matter of milliseconds” and that this is formed in the brain’s amygdala, a structure that is important for human social and emotional behaviour. 

 

Scientists showed a group of test subjects a set of real and computer-generated faces that conformed to a certain set of preconceptions. The participants strongly agreed on the level of trustworthiness conveyed by each face. The next phase of the test includes showing the same images but only 33 milliseconds. 

 

Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor at NYU’s Department of Psychology and the study’s senior author explained the result saying: “Our findings suggest that the brain automatically responds to a face’s trustworthiness before it is even consciously perceived.” 

 

“The results are consistent with an extensive body of research suggesting that we form spontaneous judgments of other people that can be largely outside awareness.”

 

Freeman added that the study confirmed that our brains are wired to think that higher inner eyebrows and pronounced cheekbones are seen as trustworthy while lower inner eyebrows and shallower cheekbones are seen untrustworthy.