The face of sacrifice

You can’t judge a book by it’s cover; but we all do. Even if you make a conscious decision to not interpret how a person is by the way they look, you will still do it. A lot of that is hard-wired into your brain by evolution and is unconscious so don’t beat yourself up about it. There are times though when that evolutionarily developed sense of people does not pick up the subtleties of human behaviour, and a new study has shown that one aspect of face shape in men definitely has some unexpected outcomes in terms of behaviour.

The stereotype of a man with a broad face, square jaw, and stoic demeanour is that he will be a tough dude, lacking warmth, and maybe even less than honest. In popular culture men with wide faces are often portrayed as “bad to the bone” according to the authors of a new study but they wondered whether this relationship between facial width and personality could really be so simple.

To test this they gave students from the University of St Andrews money to play a game in groups. The game gave them the option to either benefit themselves or risk their money in order to benefit the larger group. Half of the students were told that the outcomes of the game would be compared to other groups of St Andrews students and the other half were told that the outcomes would be compared with a rival university (Edinburgh University).

The results showed that when Edinburgh University was mentioned, the men with wider faces from St Andrews University were more self-sacrificing with their money than other men. However, when the rival university was not mentioned the men with wide faces were less co-operative, and less likely to sacrifice, than other men.

This suggests that while men with wider faces may show more aggressive behaviours, it also suggests that they are more likely to make sacrifices to support the groups to which they belong. So the same facial characteristic can predict both social and anti-social behaviour depending on the context.

This is even more interesting when you place it alongside other research such as that from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee showing that Fortune 500 companies with wide-faced CEOs have businesses with much better financial performance than those with chief executives with narrower faces. Politicians with wide faces have been shown to have a greater drive for achievement and ice hockey players with wide faces spend more time in the penalty box.

It’s all to do with testosterone causing widening of the face and a larger jaw. What this study shows though, is that the implications for behaviour are far more nuanced and dependent on circumstances than you might think.

Let’s face it though, appearances do matter to us in terms of how we interpret the world. No-one is a prisoner of their genetic make-up and facial and body dimensions don’t tell the whole story of how a person will behave. Maybe though this does explain the massive rise in “chinplant” cosmetic surgery that is happening right now (see the story from earlier this year in this news column). It could be all those CEOs of Fortune 500 companies rushing out to widen their faces and reassure their shareholders into the bargain.