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We all know the game is inherently rigged for square jawed white men at birth, that’s why the rest of us should (legally) exploit any angle we can find to get ahead. Such is life
I find it interesting that the study was conducted in Glasgow and the participants were 30 young, white, native English speaking people. If they were all from that University or even that area, then they are applying their own regional attitudes to what they judge and what they don't. From watching a ton of British TV, I've picked up that they seem to be able to finely pinpoint where someone is from in the UK by their specific accent. An American might think of this in broad terms like "Of course I can tell a Scottish accent from an English accent" but it's beyond that, to specific regions, cities, sometimes even what side of town you grew up on.
I would expect that people from different parts of the world make assumptions and judgments about others based on very different superficial criteria.
In various points in history, being overweight meant that you were wealthy, because you could afford enough food to get fat on. In modern America, we would more often correlate wealth and prosperity with looking fit, healthy, and being able to maintain the appearance of youth through various products and procedures. A look of premature aging and letting your body "go" is more what we expect to see with the relatively poor here, where there is plenty of food for just about everyone but the quality of it and access to the gym and the time to exercise and so on is a privilege.
I like for people to assume that I don't have much, even when it isn't true. For one thing I don't want to look like a good target to be robbed, scammed or taken advantage of. Beyond that, I will judge people by how they treat someone that they don't think of as being a cash cow on the hoof. I don't like snobs. I had to buy some fancy shoes for a formal event once, and I went into the store with a lot of money to spend but not looking like it...and got ignored by the lady working there who dashed to help the customer carrying the ugly designer purse. Well OK, I can take my money elsewhere. If this happened now, I'd probably write a review about it.
Sometimes those who judge the book by the cover lose out, and sometimes they really should.
It was a click-bait article, but there are a couple of things to consider:
Classism is much more prevalent in the U.K. than the states.
There are distinctive features that can mark a child of alcoholic parents, and other issues that can include genetics.
"The study's participants consisted of thirty young, white, native English-speaking people, with an average age of 22."
That right there should inform you about the level of "science" in the study. My concern about how frat boys from the University judge others is right up there with my concern over how my butt smells to a golden retriever.
Guffaw. If I look like a movie star people will treat me like a movie star? Might be some truth in that.
A friend and I were just talking about how genetics and, surprisingly, life experience can function in body appearance and how specialists in psychology learn to read "clues" not only in behavior and speech but also in appearance of clients.
I can't state any off-the cuff-absolutes about this art but there are fascinating observations being made by practitioners.
Anybody remember reading about phrenology? "A pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits." It was popular in the Nineteenth Century and then debunked.
Now healers are discovering that trauma victims carry some evidence of past trauma, even familial trauma, in their bodies and that it can manifest in appearance. Some even claim to identify the type of trauma by the area of the body affected.
Bumps on the head? I don't know. We do know now that people with sociopathic tendencies have often experienced head trauma in childhood. Maybe they were on to something. (and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome can and does manifest in sociopathic symptoms, bumps or not.) So the factors were more complicated than early observers noticed.
My information is anecdotal and from massage therapists, doctors, trauma therapists, social workers. Their method of gathering information is the ABC method. How does a client appear, behave and converse (think.) Those are the same ways we all assess each other in public life. Different cultures, of course, will use different criteria for judging success.
I believe subcultures will also follow that pattern. That is, what looks like a wealthy, successful person to a group of teenagers may be different than to a group of college professors.
I'd love to be able to find some more definitive articles about this phenomenon. Maybe the discipline has a name?
Complete BS. Google the 10 richest men in the world. Completely different facial shapes ranging form long and narrow to bowling ball.
BS study is BS.
Culture has so much to do with whether or not you are going to be innovative or hardworking or willing to take risks or make the self-sacrifices it takes to get rich. The idea your facial shape dominates is preposterous. It is very possible that facial shape adds to your social appeal and gives you a slight advantage, but not to the point it is the primary factor in wealth creation.
Complete BS. Google the 10 richest men in the world. Completely different facial shapes ranging form long and narrow to bowling ball.
BS study is BS.
Culture has so much to do with whether or not you are going to be innovative or hardworking or willing to take risks or make the self-sacrifices it takes to get rich. The idea your facial shape dominates is preposterous. It is very possible that facial shape adds to your social appeal and gives you a slight advantage, but not to the point it is the primary factor in wealth creation.
Pure BS.
Thank you for your comments...I did say "hyperbolic click bait".
I do think that stress can affect your face, though. When I was in the worst times with my ex, I had a deep wrinkle between by eyebrows that went away after I moved out and got away from him.
And of course, smoking, drug use, lots of lifestyle things that are different from one person to the next can affect the appearance of your face. Access to dentistry, and so on.
I had a middle aged French teacher in high school who was actually from France, and grew up speaking the language, and the shape of her mouth was kind of...droopy, I guess? Not in a "I've had a stroke" way, but her neutral resting face had a very relaxed and slack look to her full lips and mouth area, and it looked like she just did not exercise those muscles much. If that makes any sense? I remember thinking that it was such a fit with the way that her French sounded. Whereas other languages may have more strident sounds that could require more tension to the muscles of the mouth and face?
Could have just been a coincidence.
So there could be some observable information in the analysis of faces, but yeah the article seems to not be based on anything like that.
Guffaw. If I look like a movie star people will treat me like a movie star? Might be some truth in that.
A friend and I were just talking about how genetics and, surprisingly, life experience can function in body appearance and how specialists in psychology learn to read "clues" not only in behavior and speech but also in appearance of clients.
I can't state any off-the cuff-absolutes about this art but there are fascinating observations being made by practitioners.
Anybody remember reading about phrenology? "A pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits." It was popular in the Nineteenth Century and then debunked.
Now healers are discovering that trauma victims carry some evidence of past trauma, even familial trauma, in their bodies and that it can manifest in appearance. Some even claim to identify the type of trauma by the area of the body affected.
Bumps on the head? I don't know. We do know now that people with sociopathic tendencies have often experienced head trauma in childhood. Maybe they were on to something. (and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome can and does manifest in sociopathic symptoms, bumps or not.) So the factors were more complicated than early observers noticed.
My information is anecdotal and from massage therapists, doctors, trauma therapists, social workers. Their method of gathering information is the ABC method. How does a client appear, behave and converse (think.) Those are the same ways we all assess each other in public life. Different cultures, of course, will use different criteria for judging success.
I believe subcultures will also follow that pattern. That is, what looks like a wealthy, successful person to a group of teenagers may be different than to a group of college professors.
I'd love to be able to find some more definitive articles about this phenomenon. Maybe the discipline has a name?
Might I suggest 'stereotyping' as a name for the 'discipline'? There's also a well-known cognitive bias called 'the halo effect', where people tend to ascribe positive across-the-board characteristics to people whom they deem good-looking. I have however read that there's a correlation between IQ scores and facial attractiveness, so maybe the intuition behind the halo effect isn't entirely unfounded.
I remember talking to a couple guys at the casino sportsbook last year. The one guy was rather insecurely going on about how much money he made at his job; he then interrupted his self-promotion to add 'But nobody thinks I make that kind of money because of the way I look' (he was a bit of an odd-looking guy). The other guy who was giving Apparently Well-Off But Insecure Dude an audience responded, 'Ain't nobody knows what money looks like.' I burst out laughing at that remark, and the self-promoter just barely managed a grin.
The streetwise Buffalonian who provided that reassurance may need to book a flight to Scotland.
Ahhh that explains why the richest excludes Scot’s
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