How to Judge People by What They Look Like by Edward Dutton

‘You can’t judge people by what they look like!’ It’s drummed into us as children and, as this book proves, it is utterly false. In this highly readable analysis of the academic research, Dutton shows that we are evolved to judge people’s psychology from what they look like, we can accurately work out people’s personality and intelligence from how they look, and (quite often) we have to if we want to survive. Body shape, hairiness, eye width, finger length, even how big a woman’s breasts are . . . Dutton shows that these, and much else, are windows into personality, intelligence, or both. Once you read How to Judge People by What They Look Like, you’ll never look at people the same again.

Foreword by Prof. Bruce Charlton

Appearances are not always deceptive. Indeed, quite the opposite. In this highly informative and entertaining mini-book, Dr Dutton surveys the psychological data in support of the neglected idea that we can tell a lot about someone from how they look. The fact that most people believe they can judge a stranger by their face and body makes it plausible that we really can do this, if not with total accuracy, then at least to a useful degree. It is a question of probabilities. So long as we are better than random at predicting traits such as personality, intelligence or aggression; overall this would have a positive impact on reproductive success. As social mammals, this attribute would have been very helpful, and sometimes vital, during our evolutionary history. Dr Dutton’s book is a necessary corrective to misleading modern myths and taboos about ‘judgmentalism’ and stereotyping. As he makes clear; so long as we are prepared to modify our first impressions in the light of further evidence; it is reasonable and sensible to take seriously our innate ability to sum-up a stranger with a glance.

Prof. Bruce Charlton 

Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at Newcastle University and Visiting Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham.  

Chapter One

The Strange Death of Physiognomy

‘People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.’ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Everyone’s heard the cliché, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’ Don’t judge people by their appearance. Judge people, if you have to judge them at all, by what’s in their hearts. It’s a warm, cuddly idea: that nobody can help what they look like and what they look like is nothing to do with what they actually are like. Imploring people not to judge by appearances has many benefits: it makes you seem kind, for one, and it emphasises your profundity. You are somehow able to rise above your instincts, ignore the ‘superficial,’ and plunge into the depths of people’s hearts. 

In the 2001 comedy Shallow Hal, Jack Black plays Hal Larsen, who is obsessed with physical beauty. Hal’s superficiality appals the ‘life success coach’ Tony Robbins (who plays himself). Robbins ends up sharing an elevator with Hal. Robbins hypnotises Hal such that he can only see people’s inner beauty. If they’re a good person then they’ll be attractive; if they’re a nasty person then they’ll look hideous. Accordingly, Hal ends-up dating an extremely kind but morbidly obese young woman, played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Unaccountably, from Hal’s perspective, chairs collapse under this slender goddess, she creates an enormous splash at the local swimming pool, and she has a bizarrely negative opinion of her own appearance. Most of us would like to think that we are like the hypnotized Hal and that we ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover.’  

1. The Wisdom of the Ancients

Except, we generally do. Despite gaining all the social benefits of claiming we don’t judge by appearances we almost certainly do so, even if only unconsciously. And we do so because we are evolved to do so, and because doing so has worked up until now. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) quipped, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ‘Only shallow people do not judge by appearances’ (Wilde, 2012). In Medieval and Early Modern England, it went without saying that you judged by appearances. Although the hypotheses which underpinned their thought-systems – such as astrology – were hopeless, our ancestors had it partly right when it came to what is called ‘physiognomy.’ This is the attempt to judge a person’s character from what they look like. 

The Ancient Greeks were firm believers in physiognomy. Aristotle (384-322 BC) wrote in Prior Analytics that, ‘It is possible to infer character from features’ (Aristotle, 1989) and many other Greek scholars took the same view. Michael Scot (1175-1232), a Scottish mathematician and a scholar at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, wrote a learned thesis on the subject (Porter, 2005, p.122). In the late 14th century work Canterbury Tales, the author, Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400), gives the Wife of Bath a gap in her front teeth to imply that she is highly sexual. The Reeve is of slim build, to suggest he is ‘choleric’ (bad-tempered and irritable), while the Summoner is ugly, because he’s an unpleasant person (see Hallissy, 1995). Physiognomy was taught as an academic subject at English universities, until it was outlawed by Henry VIII (r.1509-1547) for having become associated with fortune-telling (Porter, 2005, p.134).

Even so, it continued to be widely accepted in academic and literary circles. Shakespeare made frequent use of it (see Baumbach, 2008). This is most obvious in Julius Caesar’s description of Cassius: 

‘Let me have men about me that are fat 

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights 

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look 

He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous’ 

(Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II). 

The medic Thomas Browne (1605-1682) published his Religio Medici in 1643, in which he observed, ‘there is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe . . . For there are mystically in our faces certain Characters that carry in them the motto of our Souls, wherein he that cannot read A.B.C. may read our natures’ (Browne, 1844, p.102). 

Physiognomy fell into disrepute precisely because of its association with ‘Master Mendicants,’ but it was then re-popularised by the Swiss scholar Johan Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) (see Lavater, 1826). Up until Lavater, people had believed that there were a number of ‘general types’ of people, with physiognomy allowing you to discern which type a person was: choleric (temperamental), phlegmatic (calm), mercurial (changeable and unpredictable) or sanguine (optimistic). Lavater developed this, arguing that physiognomy could be used to be far more specific – to discern the character traits of individuals. Physiognomy was duly revived and by the nineteenth century it was implicit in many novels, and most obviously in The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was written in 1890. Dorian wants to maintain his beauty but live an amoral and hedonistic life. Accordingly, he sells his soul in return for his amoral life being reflected in a portrait of him, rather than on his own face and body. He remains beautiful, while the portrait becomes increasingly unattractive. In many other Victorian novels, besides, the good characters were physically attractive while the bad characters were ugly and deformed. Appearance was, once again, a short-hand for character (see essays in Percival & Tytler, 2005). Famously, the captain of The Beagle, Robert Fitzroy, wanted an ‘energetic young man’ as a gentleman companion on his voyage. The nature of Charles Darwin’s nose told Fitzroy that Darwin could not possibly be that man. Darwin’s daughter, Henrietta, later stated that Fitzroy had ‘made up his mind that no man with such a nose could have energy.’ Fortunately, the rest of Darwin’s face compensated for this: ‘His brow saved him’ (quoted in Highfield et al., 2009). 

And this is where the English gentleman scientist Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) makes an appearance. Statistician, polymath, social scientist, proto-geneticist, inventor, meteorologist, geographer and even tropical explorer, Galton was Renaissance man. If there was a belief that remained yet to be scientifically proved or disproved, Galton was drawn to proving or disproving it (see Bulmer, 2004). Physiognomy, therefore, fascinated him. In 1878, Galton published an article in the journal Nature in which he presented his findings. He developed a system of composite photographs in which he superimposed a variety of faces onto each other using multiple exposures. This allowed him to create photographic representations of those with certain qualities, such as being beautiful, criminal or ill. These led to distinct photographs, implying, for example, that there is a degree to which criminals have distinct faces from the rest of the population. 

Unfortunately, physiognomy became associated – and, perhaps, remains associated – with phrenology. Pioneered by German scientist Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828), this was the belief that the nature of a person’s character can be discerned by small differences in the shape of their skull. As the brain is an organ, and different parts of the brain have different functions, it seemed to follow that bumps or indentations in the skull would reflect similar properties in the brain. As such, people could ‘have their lumps felt’ and it would reveal a great deal about the nature of their personality; albeit based on the very limited nineteenth century knowledge of brain modules. Phrenology became hugely popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with the establishment of learned phrenology societies, including a significant one in Edinburgh (see de Giustino, 2016). The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded by the Scottish solicitor George Combe (1788-1858) who asserted, ‘that the brain is the organ of mind; that the brain is an aggregate of several parts, each subserving a distinct mental faculty; and that the size of the cerebral organ is, caeteris paribus, an index of power or energy of function’ (quoted in Fodor, 1983, p.131). Unsurprisingly, phrenology was debunked. Physiognomy found itself (intellectually) guilty by association.

2. ‘Not by the colour of their skin . . .’ 

The other problem physiognomy has to deal with is the obvious unpleasant consequences judging people by their appearance has when it comes to the issue of ‘race.’ This is most obvious in the case of a bunch of nasty, anti-intellectuals who took power in Germany and attempted to wipe out the race which they regarded as their own race’s chief competitor. The Nazis measured facial features in order to determine the archetypal ‘Jew’ and the archetypal ‘Aryan,’ giving the measurement of facial features for any broader purpose a bad name. But the actions of the Nazis are entirely irrelevant. As we will see shortly, physiognomy works, in most cases, within races. We will look more at ‘race,’ and its relationship with physiognomy, shortly.

But most importantly, if we accept Darwinian Theory, we really must ask ourselves, ‘Why wouldn’t physiognomy work?’ Humans are an advanced form of ape, very closely related to all mammals, such as the lion. Female lions are more attracted to males with darker manes. This is because these males have higher levels of testosterone, as reflected in the colour of their manes, and are thus more aggressive and more likely to win fights. Physiognomy works with lions (West & Packer, 2002). It would be extraordinary if it didn’t work with humans.     

But before proving that it does work, we should be clear on our key terms. I have already defined these terms in detail in my book The Genius Famine (Dutton & Charlton, 2015). So those who have read that book may wish to skip this section as much of it is exactly the same as in The Genius Famine.