Could you detect narcissism or psychopathy by just looking at someone’s face?
Science suggests that it is possible.
A new study has shown that People with so-called ‘Dark Triad Personality Features’ share similar facilities and expressions.
They tend to have stronger eyebrows, illegible expressions, symmetrical faces, narrower eyes and a direct look – and they smile less.
Researchers in Turkey have conducted three studies into people from Turkey and America who looked at photos of digitally created faces.
The faces are carefully manufactured on the basis of functions associated with high or low levels of dark triade properties based on photos built by taking the average of the features of real individuals who scored high or low on dark triade characteristic tests.
The study showed that people could identify all these characteristics at least 50 to 75 percent of the time, from headshots alone.
Scientists suggest that people to identify these characteristics may be an evolutionary adjustment that our human ancestors have developed to prevent dangerous people.
Instead of analyzing individual facial characteristics, this research investigated how people form the general impressions of personality of faces. People were able to properly guess more than half the time
“Estimating the personality traits of others has adaptive benefits as are aware of the opportunities and costs that the other party can offer … and it can guide us about the behavior and making decisions in our social interactions,” the researchers wrote in the paper published in the paper published in Personality and individual differences.
People with the three most important dark triad properties narcism (grandiose self-obsession), Machiavellianism (cold, tactical manipulation) and psychopathy (impulsive ruthlessness)-are often manipulative and emotional brick walls, usually willing to do or say their way.
They also have a grandiose feeling of self, are usually impulsive and can deal with dangerous or exploiting behavior, such as love bombing and emotional blackmail.
People with these qualities can be mainly skilled in hiding them, especially in the beginning.
Narcissists often come out as extremely charming and busy meeting them.
Meanwhile, Machiavellians excel in adapting their moral values ​​based on what will benefit them most and will usually be callig and cold.
Researchers have carried out three studies that include a total of 880 people.
They viewed composite images of photos of people who scored very high or very little personality tests and were asked to guess what face showed more a certain characteristic.
The first study included 160 Americans who looked at composite faces with high and low levels of the dark triad and Big Five properties – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreement and neuroticism (anxious versus stable).
People had to guess which of two faces scored higher on a certain characteristic.
Participants recommended more than 50 percent of the time correctly for dark triade properties, while the Big Five was identified less often.
However, there were a few exceptions, including AGREABLESS – in terms of friendly and reliable, the easiest for research topics to spot, in particular in male faces – 58 to 78 percent of the time; Conscientionness, about 55 percent of the time, and extraversion, about 75 percent of the time.
But people struggled consistently to identify openness and neuroticism, which includes emotional instability, fear, self -consciousness and sorrow, often the accompanying faces recommend incorrect.
They identified extraversion – extrovert, social and energetic through social interactions – only in the faces of women, not for men.
In Study, researchers took on 322 American adults who participated in the same study as the first but also demographic questions such as age, ideology and sex, which ensure that effects are not driven by certain hidden prejudices, such as one group of younger or liberal.
Dark Triade properties were again correctly identified, while the identification of the Big Five properties was more mixed.
Again, the only two who were not identifiable were neuroticism and openness. The test subjects were not influenced by age, gender or political ideology.
Study two proved that the results of study one were not a coincidence, researchers concluded.
While participants discovered dark triad properties of faces in a reliable way, the results for the Big Five inconsistent – were only extraversion (in women), pleasantness and conscientiousness showed modest accuracy, which suggests that some properties are more ‘visible’ than others than others
Study three were 402 Turkish students who repeated two, but in a classroom environment.
The results were the same. And they were better than American adults in identifying narcissism, although less able to assess male extraversion and openness.
Researchers have not identified any of the faces of people with psychopathy.
Yet those people with those disorders tend to also have those personality traits, including insensitivity, sensational behavior, convenience of manipulating people and superficial charisma.
During human evolution, being able to ‘read’ people has proven an important survival mechanism. Spotting personality characteristics through what someone looks like, gives people an advantage and says that we have to remember a person who seems manipulative or exploited.
These qualities inform the way people act.
People who score a lot of extraversion are usually easy to recognize because they smile talkably, energetic and fast. They show external signals, including a relaxed attitude and a warm expression, which are usually easily recognized.
On the other side of the spectrum, people with the dark triade properties have the chance to lie, manipulate and act aggressively, giving them more chance of causing problems in workplaces and in their relationships.
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