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      In your face: facial metrics predict aggressive behaviour in the laboratory and in varsity and professional hockey players

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          Abstract

          Facial characteristics are an important basis for judgements about gender, emotion, personality, motivational states and behavioural dispositions. Based on a recent finding of a sexual dimorphism in facial metrics that is independent of body size, we conducted three studies to examine the extent to which individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were associated with trait dominance (using a questionnaire) and aggression during a behavioural task and in a naturalistic setting (varsity and professional ice hockey). In study 1, men had a larger facial width-to-height ratio, higher scores of trait dominance, and were more reactively aggressive compared with women. Individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio predicted reactive aggression in men, but not in women (predicted 15% of variance). In studies 2 (male varsity hockey players) and 3 (male professional hockey players), individual differences in the facial width-to-height ratio were positively related to aggressive behaviour as measured by the number of penalty minutes per game obtained over a season (predicted 29 and 9% of the variance, respectively). Together, these findings suggest that the sexually dimorphic facial width-to-height ratio may be an ‘honest signal’ of propensity for aggressive behaviour.

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          Most cited references48

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          Gender differences in personality traits across cultures: robust and surprising findings.

          Secondary analyses of Revised NEO Personality Inventory data from 26 cultures (N = 23,031) suggest that gender differences are small relative to individual variation within genders; differences are replicated across cultures for both college-age and adult samples, and differences are broadly consistent with gender stereotypes: Women reported themselves to be higher in Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Warmth, and Openness to Feelings, whereas men were higher in Assertiveness and Openness to Ideas. Contrary to predictions from evolutionary theory, the magnitude of gender differences varied across cultures. Contrary to predictions from the social role model, gender differences were most pronounced in European and American cultures in which traditional sex roles are minimized. Possible explanations for this surprising finding are discussed, including the attribution of masculine and feminine behaviors to roles rather than traits in traditional cultures.
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            Very first impressions.

            First impressions of people's personalities are often formed by using the visual appearance of their faces. Defining how quickly these impressions can be formed has critical implications for understanding social interactions and for determining the visual properties used to shape them. To study impression formation independent of emotional cues, threat judgments were made on faces with a neutral expression. Consequently, participants' judgments pertained to the personality rather than to a certain temporary emotional state (e.g., anger). The results demonstrate that consistent first impressions can be formed very quickly, based on whatever information is available within the first 39 ms. First impressions were less consistent under these conditions when the judgments were about intelligence, suggesting that survival-related traits are judged more quickly. The authors propose that low spatial frequencies mediate this swift formation of threat judgments and provide evidence that supports this hypothesis. 2006 APA, all rights reserved
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              Predicting political elections from rapid and unreflective face judgments.

              Here we show that rapid judgments of competence based solely on the facial appearance of candidates predicted the outcomes of gubernatorial elections, the most important elections in the United States next to the presidential elections. In all experiments, participants were presented with the faces of the winner and the runner-up and asked to decide who is more competent. To ensure that competence judgments were based solely on facial appearance and not on prior person knowledge, judgments for races in which the participant recognized any of the faces were excluded from all analyses. Predictions were as accurate after a 100-ms exposure to the faces of the winner and the runner-up as exposure after 250 ms and unlimited time exposure (Experiment 1). Asking participants to deliberate and make a good judgment dramatically increased the response times and reduced the predictive accuracy of judgments relative to both judgments made after 250 ms of exposure to the faces and judgments made within a response deadline of 2 s (Experiment 2). Finally, competence judgments collected before the elections in 2006 predicted 68.6% of the gubernatorial races and 72.4% of the Senate races (Experiment 3). These effects were independent of the incumbency status of the candidates. The findings suggest that rapid, unreflective judgments of competence from faces can affect voting decisions.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Proc Biol Sci
                RSPB
                Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
                The Royal Society (London )
                0962-8452
                1471-2954
                19 August 2008
                22 November 2008
                : 275
                : 1651
                : 2651-2656
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Psychology, Brock University 500 Glenridge Avenue, St. Catharines, Ont., Canada L2S 3A1
                [2 ]Centre for Neuroscience, Brock University 500 Glenridge Avenue, St Catharines, Ont., Canada L2S 3A1
                Author notes
                [* ]Author and address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue, St Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1 ( cmccormick@ 123456brocku.ca )
                Article
                rspb20080873
                10.1098/rspb.2008.0873
                2570531
                18713717
                b70648a2-d560-40df-89c5-999ddfe3bfab
                Copyright © 2008 The Royal Society

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 26 June 2008
                : 24 July 2008
                : 25 July 2008
                Categories
                Research Article

                Life sciences
                aggression,sexual selection,dominance,face,sex differences
                Life sciences
                aggression, sexual selection, dominance, face, sex differences

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