From the University of Michigan News Service:
Can you judge a man’s faithfulness by his face? How about whether he would be a good father, or a good provider?
Many people believe they can, according to a University of Michigan study published in the December issue of Personal Relationships, a peer-reviewed academic journal.
U-M social psychologist Daniel J. Kruger conducted a series of on-line experiments showing 854 male and female undergraduate students versions of composite male faces that had been altered to look more or less masculine by adjusting, for example, the shape of the jaw, the strength of brow ridges and the thickness of lips.
Participants were asked which of the men they preferred as mates, dates, parents of their children, or companions for their girlfriends. They were also asked which men were most likely to behave in certain ways—starting a fight or hitting on someone else’s girlfriend, for example.
“It’s remarkable that minor physiological differences lead people to pre-judge a man’s personality and behavior,” said Kruger, a research scientist at the U-M School of Public Health and the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). “But even though physiognomy (the attribution of personality to faces) is thought to be a pseudoscience, a lot of people believe there’s a link between looks and personality.”
More here.