The social space of faces

Although morphopsychology, which intends to describe the personality from the shape of faces, does not seem very scientific (eg wikipedia or this article), we use every day in an intuitive morphopsychology.

The faces in particular give us an impression more or less dominance and reliability. It concludes that Alexander Todorov, a researcher at Princeton, in a recent article. Todorov shows through factor analysis that dominance and reliability are the two main factors that help classify the faces according to the idea that personality is associated.

The image above shows these two characteristics. We see that the dominance is associated with the character "square" face, and reliability to smile more than the intrinsic shape of the face. Other features of the faces are more or less consensual, as the attractiveness (more or less attractive), or the threat.

Todorov goes further, explaining that some of the faces give, when they are neutral, a feeling of joy or anger. We tend to assign personality traits corresponding to the character ... often wrong.