You finally have the interview of your dream job. Many applications, many rejection letters – but now you have a shot at the job you want. You go. Maybe you shake hands with someone who will decide your future, pour a glass of water to calm your nerves.
But what you don’t know is that nothing matters.
The second time the interviewer looks at you, they think you look so incompetent and untrustworthy that you won’t get the job.
Because unfortunately, they are among the people who, a new study shows, have a tendency to judge the worst qualities of a person from a quick glance at a person’s face.
Check out the two faces below. Can you hire these people? Who looks the smartest? Can you believe that everyone can see your laptop in the cafe when you go out to make a phone call?
These images were created by psychologist Lisa DeBruine and her colleagues. In fact, they are group portraits, and each one is created by combining four different faces.
Although these faces are not real, you may have made a rough judgment about the abilities of each group based on their facial features and characteristics. We do this all the time. Even though the people in these pictures are gone, we still think of them.
Making snap judgments about how trustworthy someone is, how dominant they are, or how smart they are can be a useful measure of personality.
But this, unfortunately, can also lead to wrong thinking – for example, thinking that people with special features must be unreliable.
Harsh judgments
Recent work from researchers in Japan shows something alarming; that some of us want to think deeply about the behavior and personality of others based on facial expressions alone.
In a series of online studies involving more than 300 people, Atsunobu Suzuki and his colleagues discovered what they call “facial expressions” (FBTIs). Basically, subjects made a series of personality judgments after looking briefly at a person’s face.
Although everyone develops FBTIs to some degree, they found that some people are prone to extremes (both good and bad). This was the case even when the age, sex, and ethnicity of the participants were controlled.
Imagine seeing a certain type of face, perhaps with dry eyes and a masculine appearance, and immediately you feel that the person is very unreliable. Or that someone with feminine features and big eyes can’t handle it. As Suzuki and his colleagues point out, this is difficult.
Look at the problem
We already know cognitive bias abounds in new hire decision-making. The 2018 study sent out a variety of nearly identical CVs to apply for 50 different jobs.
The only difference was the name on the CV: Adam Smith on one and Ravindra Thalwal on the other. Ravindra received almost half the responses compared to his famous British doppelgänger.
One of the leading figures in early research, Alexander Todorov, tells us that these snap judgments are intuitive but often inaccurate. And we also know that firsts are hard to shake. So this can mean that the wrong people are often hired.
The thing about unconscious bias is that you don’t realize you’re doing it most of the time. This is one of the reasons why some companies insist on teaching unconscious bias (although some people still resist).
Teaching unconscious bias is not a solution to prejudice, but even short-term interventions have been shown to change people’s attitudes.
You can create racist studies that you are unconscious of discrimination against other physical characteristics such as race, gender, and weight. But looking at faces seems to be a different concept for race, gender, and body type.
One way would be to make people aware that they exhibit extreme FBTIs by performing a test similar to the Suzuki test.
Research has shown that being aware of your biases can lead to changes in attitudes over time, but people need repeated interventions for any real behavior change.
Perhaps simply letting someone know that they make extreme judgments of personality based on facial features may be enough to draw unconscious bias into the subconscious.
We will definitely have to try; otherwise, you yourself may become a victim of face-ism in the future.
Paddy Ross, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Durham University
This article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the first article.
