Research: Psychology of Faces

To understand a bit more of what my illustration would be representing, I decided to take a look at the definition of psychology and at articles about the psychology of faces. It is important to have a bit of background knowledge of my subject so that I could produce something that would clearly relate to it.

Psychology

To begin I'm going to look at the definition of the word "psychology" to understand what it is exactly. This is what I got in the Oxford Dictionary:

 "Noun

1 [mass noun] the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behaviour in a given context.

2 [in singular] the mental characteristics or attitude of a person or group: the psychology of child-killers

The mental factors governing a situation or activity: the psychology of interpersonal relationships"

So the psychology of faces is basically the scientific study of faces, and I deduce from the definition that (perhaps) behaviour could affect the face itself. 

Facial Expressions

In my opinion I believe that facial expressions play a great role when it comes to the understanding of emotions, because we as humans express our feelings through our facial expressions even though we try to hide that. Our faces "crumple" when crying, our eyes narrow and nostrils flare when we're angry... Such muscle movements in our faces express how we feel. "Facial expressions are an important channel of nonverbal communication." (FaceandEmotion.com) Another important aspect of facial expressions is that they are a universally recognised body language – they are similar all around the world.  

http://www.autismspot.com/tags/Spot-Content-Tags/facial-expression

The eyes seem to give away a lot about what a person is feeling, and are known to be the “windows of the soul”. Here’s what I have found on Psychology.about.com

 "Eye gaze
When a person looks directly into your eyes when having a conversion, it indicates that they are interested and paying attention. However, prolonged eye contact can feel threatening. On the other hand, breaking eye contact and frequently looking away may indicate that the person is distracted, uncomfortable, or trying to conceal his or her real feelings.

 Blinking
Blinking is natural, but you should also pay attention to whether a person is blinking too much or too little. People often blink more rapidly when they are feeling distressed or uncomfortable. Infrequent blinking may indicate that a person is intentionally trying to control his or her eye movements. For example, a poker player might blink less frequently because he is purposely trying to appear unexcited about the hand he was dealt.

 Pupil size
One of the most subtle cues that eyes provide is through the size of the pupils. While light levels in the environment control pupil dilation, sometimes emotions can also cause small changes in pupil size. For example, you may have heard the phase "bedroom eyes" used to describe the look someone gives when they are attracted to another person."

In fact, this website has a lot to say on the different parts of the human face, not only the eyes. Because of how useful I find this information to be I am going to create a little mindmap or image of a face and label each part, just for research. 

"What's In A Face?"

I’ve taken a look at this in-depth article here concerning physical appearance and behaviour, and how we humans really do judge a book by its cover. What’s surprising is that are assumptions about a person are normally correct even if we only see a headshot.

“The face we're born with reflects personality and is molded by experience, which in turn reflects how we are perceived.”  Jena Pincott, “What’s In A Face?”

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201210/whats-in-face?page=3

I believe this to be an excellent quote, and by reading further the article has taught me that it is not only our facial expressions that show what kind of personality we have, but also the facial structure itself. I find myself feeling guilty because I actually think the things that this article has pointed out for example, how humans think that beautiful people are honest (this is also known as the "Halo Effect"). However we are wrong most of the time as looks can be deceiving, but we naturally judge someone by their appearance.

What I find most interesting is the link between emotions and a person's eyes. It is not mentioned until the very end of the article but apparently men are more attracted to women with larger pupils without realising why. The reason is because a woman's pupil dilate "during the hormone surge before ovulation and when looking at attractive men". 

This links back to my previous research where I stated that the eyes were perhaps one of the most important features of the human face in terms of emotion, as they are known to be the “windows the soul”.  


Measuring Faces

Another article also agrees with how facial structure could affect our views on someone, judging them almost instantly.  

“...They asked whether greater facial width may be linked to reduced perceived trustworthiness…” (Psychology Today: Measuring Faces)

To experiment on this notion they gather a group of males and females and asked them to play a certain game. The first person would carry a specific amount of money, and they have to decide whether to keep that money or “invest” it. If they invest it they would pass it onto the second person that would then double that amount, and then they would have to decide how much to give back to the first person. This is where the trust element steps in; would the second give the money back to the first, or keep it all to themselves?

So the whole point of this game is to see whether the first would trust the second to invest in their money, and they wouldn’t know anything about this second person apart from having a photo of their face (their clothes and hair would be obscured).

After gathering the results of 143 students researchers found that:

“Women, on average, trusted 45% and reciprocated with 69% of their counterparts. The facial-width ratios of female participants did not correlate with any of their trust game behaviour.”

And:

“For men, in contrast, trusting ran at around 51% and reciprocation occurred with 72%, on average.

‘The facial-width ratios of male participants showed no relation to trust decisions but did relate to decisions to reciprocate. Male participants with higher facial-width ratios (wide faces) were more likely to exploit their counterparts' trust than were male participants with lower facial width.’ “

Therefore:

“The ratio of facial width to height predicts male reciprocation behaviour in trust games such that wider faced males are more likely to exploit trust than are slimmer faced males.”

(All quotes from Psychology Today: Measuring Faces)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201003/measuring-faces-trustworthiness-and-facial-features

After taking this into account, the scientists then went onto Photoshop to display two versions of a person’s face, with one having a wider facial-width ratio. From this photo – after showcasing it in front a large audience – they deduced: “120 showed no bias or more often chose the images with higher facial-width ratio as more trustworthy, and 165 chose the images with lower facial-width ratio as more trustworthy. Participants were significantly more likely to choose the images with lower facial-width ratio as trustworthy." (Psychology Today - Measuring Faces)

Phrenology

http://www.phrenology.com/phrenology.html

I also took a brief look at Phrenology, and what I discovered was that it was a theory very popular during the Victorian times where people believed that the size and shape of the human skull could tell others their personalities. Although I am quite unsure about this as phrenology also says that parts of the skull represent a personality... Strange.

"This pseudoscience is based on the false assumption that mental faculties are located in brain "organs" on the surface of the brain and can be detected by visible inspection of the skull. " (skepdic.com/phren) 

Phrenology studies soon died out as it didn't really have any scientific merit.


Facial Recognition & Expressions
I'm still a bit stuck when it comes to thinking of ideas for this project, so to help me out I widened my range on the "psychology of faces" topic, and went down the route of mental disorders such as Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness).

I found a website with an interesting video that talks about how our brains function when recognising faces, as well as interviewing a man with prosopagnosia.



Originally from http://royalsociety.org/summer-science/2011/facial-perception/

Here are my notes from this video:

Here's are two videos that I found on reading faces, and below are my brief notes for each one:

Conclusion:

From looking into my subject matter I have learnt a lot more about the human face than I did before, and I was actually quite surprised because this made me realise that we, as humans, judge others very quickly just by their facial features and expression. I've also learnt of a strange study called Phrenology of how the shape of the skull could reflect the personality of a character...

I also into the actual study of human expressions as well as body language, as I wanted to widen my range of the topic a bit more.
I have found this research useful because I have been able to learn just how important facial recognition is, and how people with prosopagnosia suffer because of not having that ability.

I think I am going to take this research and produce a mind map for idea generation, and at the same time look at creating mood boards of inspirational illustrations.