Snap judgments

Snap judgments decide a face's character, psychologist finds
-Chad Boutin

We may be taught not to judge a book by its cover, but when we see a new face, our brains decide whether a person is attractive and trustworthy within a tenth of a second, according to recent Princeton research.
Princeton University psychologist Alex Todorov has found that people respond intuitively to faces so rapidly that our reasoning minds may not have time to influence the reaction -- and that our intuitions about attraction and trust are among those we form the fastest.
"The link between facial features and character may be tenuous at best, but that doesn't stop our minds from sizing other people up at a glance," said Todorov, an assistant professor of psychology. "We decide very quickly whether a person possesses many of the traits we feel are important, such as likeability and competence, even though we have not exchanged a single word with them. It appears that we are hard-wired to draw these inferences in a fast, unreflective way."

So what would you think of these people?












These are just a few of the innocent Americans illegally placed under surveillance by the Bush administration, typically because of their constitutionally-protected peaceful opposition to the Iraq war.

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Thanks to Bob Harris for the link.